American National Bank Building, Sarasota

Welcome to Sarasota’s historic heart, where the American National Bank Building (also known by its later name, the Orange Blossom Hotel) commands attention on Main Street. Though relatively modest in scale, this building holds outsized significance—having borne witness to the city’s boom, bust, and reinvention through nearly a century of change.

Completed in 1926, the structure was designed by Francis Palmer Smith in a Classical Revival / Neoclassical style—an architectural choice less common than the Mediterranean motifs popular in Florida at the time. Originally intended to serve as the headquarters of the then-new American National Bank, the building’s first floor housed the banking operations, while the upper stories offered office suites to a variety of local professionals. Although the bank failed in 1928 amid the collapse of the Florida real estate boom, the building’s life was far from over.

In the 1930s, responding to Sarasota’s growing tourist traffic, the building was transformed into the Orange Blossom Hotel, offering 125 rooms, modern conveniences, and a popular cocktail lounge called the “Aztec Room.” For more than three decades, it welcomed visitors and locals alike—hosting famous guests and becoming part of Sarasota’s instrumental shift toward tourism. In 1967, the building was repurposed again, this time as a retirement residence, and later underwent extensive renovation and restoration under private ownership.

Today, the American National Bank Building stands as a proud contributing property in the Downtown Sarasota Historic District, reflecting the city’s layered past. Visitors walking Main Street will see in its facade and proportions both the aspirations of Sarasota’s 1920s boom era and the adaptive spirit that has kept the building alive across cycles of change.