The Centennial Building

Introduction

Meridian Title Company has called the Centennial Building home since 1999. The building has stood on this block for over a century, and its story is inseparable from the story of Dade City itself.

Two Friends from Georgia (1884)

Henry W. Coleman and William N. Ferguson met as young clerks in Jonesboro, Georgia. They attended business college together in Atlanta. In the early 1880s, Coleman made a trip into Florida and came back convinced it was the place to be. Ferguson agreed. Together they went looking for a town that needed a general store.

They chose Dade City. On December 1, 1884, Coleman & Ferguson opened for business. Their first store was a one-story building roughly 150 feet long, stocked with everything a frontier town could need: saddles, harnesses, cow whips, buggies, guns, groceries, and the largest opening stock of shoes ever shipped south of Palatka to a single firm in Florida. Among their first purchases were two barrels of hard cider and candy from Atlanta.

People in the surrounding counties thought them foolish for building such a big store in what was still wild country. Within a few years, they were the largest general store in Dade City.

Building the Town

Coleman & Ferguson did not just sell goods. They helped build the town around them.

When the Seaboard Railroad arrived around 1886, Coleman & Ferguson lobbied for the station to be built near Meridian Avenue. Businesses followed the railroad, and Meridian Avenue became the main commercial street of Dade City. It still is.

In 1887, when Pasco County was carved out of Hernando County and needed a temporary courthouse, Coleman & Ferguson offered one of their buildings on Meridian Avenue, free of rent. When a permanent courthouse was needed, they built it at their own expense and donated it to the county. They helped ensure Dade City became the permanent county seat by special election on April 11, 1889.

Coleman also built the first brick building in Dade City — the home of the Bank of Pasco County at the corner of Meridian Avenue and 7th Street — and donated land for the local school and the Edwinola Hotel.

Fire, Freeze, and Rebuilding

Around 1887, as business grew, Coleman & Ferguson built a larger two-story store on the site where the Centennial Building stands today. Around 1896, it burned. The fire also destroyed several neighboring businesses.

The fire came on the heels of the Great Freeze of the 1890s, which ruined citrus groves across Florida and drove many people out of the state. But Coleman & Ferguson rebuilt on the same spot and kept going, drawing customers from thirty miles in every direction.

The Brick Building (1923)

In 1923, Coleman & Ferguson erected the brick building that stands today. Red brick and tile, two and a half stories, 60 by 123 feet, with cement floors and an automatic sprinkler system. It was built to last, and it has.

By then, the Dade City Banner was calling Coleman & Ferguson "Florida's largest independent country department store." Their trade reached across southwest Florida, and they did wholesale business with smaller country stores throughout the region.

Renewal

By the mid-1980s, downtown Dade City had earned a nickname: "Dead City." Storefronts stood vacant and buildings fell into disrepair. In 1987, the Centennial Building became one of the first major renovation projects under the city's new Main Street revitalization program. A $600,000 renovation converted the building from retail space into professional offices and helped spark more than $3 million in downtown investment within the first 18 months.

The Building Today

In 1999, Jon L. Auvil established Meridian Title Company in Suite 100 of the Centennial Building. A third-generation Florida attorney who has practiced real estate law in Florida since 1983, Jon chose this building deliberately. A title company protects the history of property ownership. There is something fitting about doing that work from a building with this much history of its own.

The Centennial Building is listed on the Dade City Historic Register as the "Centennial-Coleman & Ferguson Building." It stands on the street that Coleman & Ferguson helped make the center of town, a block from the courthouse that exists because they built the first one and gave it away.

Commerce has been conducted on this site since 1887. Meridian Title is proud to continue that tradition.

Timeline