Citrus Center
building in Orlando, Florida, United States
The Citrus Center, also known as the BB&T building, originally known as the CNA Tower, is a commercial office building in Orlando, Florida, United States located at 255 South Orange Avenue. Topped out in December 1970 and completed in April 1971, it was the first modern skyscraper in Orlando. It is 281 feet (85.65 metres) and 19 storeys tall, the first five storeys of which are a parking structure (four totally enclosed and the fifth open save for parapet walls,) with an entrance lobby and some tenants on the first floor. There is an upper mechanical floor of 1+1⁄2 storeys above Floor 19 but they are not counted as floors. The roof contains a large structure to house electrical power switching circuitry, seven elevator winches (six passenger and one freight) and window-washing equipment (a workers' cradle and davit) mounted on rails.
It became the tallest building in Orlando taking the crown from the First National Bank Building, and kept this crown for sixteen years until the Regions Bank Tower was built in 1986, but it was not eclipsed from view until the new Sun Bank Tower was built across the street in 1988. Originally it was decorated with large, dark-blue translucent letters spelling C N A along the four sides of its parapet top floor, which were illuminated at night in a light blue color; this was for years a feature of the Orlando skyline, visible for fifteen miles by road (and at least 50 miles from the Kennedy Space Center if from a high-enough vantage such as the VAB and 22 miles from the Citrus Tower in Clermont, it was also visible from the taller International Drive hotels and Lake Buena Vista and Disney World hotels.) The building contains 1,144 windows on Floors 7 through 19, and it actually has eight faces, the four corner faces being only two windows wide, which makes it an octagon.
The original cost of construction was $8 million. Two workers were killed in its construction, one of which was an iron-worker who fell to his death on the Orange Avenue side a month before the topping-out.
The building is owned by Southwest Value Partners of San Diego, California.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Citrus Center” as building in Orlando, Florida, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as building in Orlando, Florida, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16258407. Authority coordinates are 28.539, -81.378. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 1971, 1986 and 1988.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Citrus Center”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Citrus Center primary sources, Citrus Center archive and Citrus research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Citrus Center”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Citrus Center” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.