I’ve been curious about the Florence building and its rich history for a while now. Sitting at 111 North Higgins Avenue, it’s one of Missoula’s most striking landmarks — a sleek, seven-story, terra cotta- and rose-colored Art Moderne structure that first opened in 1941 but stands on the same site as two earlier Florence Hotels dating back to 1888. The original hotel was built for railroad travelers and early settlers, burned down in 1913, was rebuilt, and then burned again in 1936 before the current building rose.
In the 1970s, it was turned from a hotel to an office building, and in more recent decades, the building has been home to several cool local shops, upstairs offices and a ballroom, and it has served coffee in the lobby off and on for years.
For a couple of years now, the lobby — a stunning, airy space with couches and a fireplace — has served as a venue for pop-up makers markets and First Friday art shows. The most notable chapter of The Florence since the turn of the 21st century was The Red Bird, a fine dining restaurant and wine bar (the wine bar was added later), which closed in 2019 after 17 years. That was followed by Second Set Bistro, which closed in 2023. After that, it had that post-pandemic, ghost-town feel. And when I heard it had been bought by someone in Texas, I wasn’t sure what was to become of it. I mean, it’s historic, so that gives it some protection, but you just never know.
Turns out the owner is Thomas Taylor, a structural engineer with a firm in Dallas and an interest in historic preservation. His daughter, Lauren Taylor, is spearheading the effort to revitalize the building, and she teamed up with Paige Livingston, owner of One Eleven on the ground floor, to launch Historic Florence Cocktails & Coffee in early November. The lobby bar — serving coffee during the day and cocktails into the evening — has already started bringing the historic building back to life, and there are plans to reinvigorate more of its long-quiet spaces.
The Red Bird’s old fine-dining space will become the Sumac Cafe, a Mediterranean breakfast-and-lunch spot led in part by longtime Missoula restaurateur Abe Risho, who once ran the beloved Silk Road with his brother, Sam.
The Rishos are a well-known family of chefs, in fact. Their dad cooked old-world fare at his own Emmaus Road, which he opened in Missoula in the 1970s, and later teamed up with Sam and Abe — then in their teens and early 20s — to start Perugia in the mid-1990s, offering family-style meals inspired by cuisines from around the world.
The former wine bar will be Shapes Hi-Fi, a jazz spot inspired by Japanese hi-fi cafes, run by local musician Mark Chumrau. You’ve perhaps experienced these bars in bigger cities like Seattle. Their roots trace back to post-war jazz cafes called jazz kissas — intimate spots where vinyl connoisseurs would swap rare records and listen on high-end gear. Shapes Hi-Fi will be its own iteration of that — Chumrau is apparently a vinyl collector — and the cafe/bar will serve drinks and small plates.
“This building has such a presence that it just finally got me,” Lauren says. “And my dad is the same. He’s always like, ‘I would love to take a break. I would love to have a year of not having any construction projects, no renovation, no new anything.’ But he’s always coming up with ideas.”
Livingston laughs. “I swear, once a month, Lauren will be like, ‘So I got off the phone with Dad last night, and I need to talk to you about a new project.’”
“This building has such a presence that it just finally got me.”
When I mention to Lauren how I’d been curious about the Florence building’s future — and hearing it was owned by a guy in Texas — she nods at me with a knowing smile. She’s been in Missoula long enough to know the skepticism around non-locals and beloved downtown spaces. She came to Missoula 15 years ago, for college, to study wildlife conservation and biology, which is how her dad ended up coming to Missoula in the first place. They both admired the Florence building every time they passed it. Its concrete exterior, glass blocks and curved edges stand out in downtown Missoula, even now. But when it opened, it was considered the jewel of downtown and boasted modern luxuries like central air conditioning, underground parking and glass shower doors. One day Lauren’s dad left her a message saying he’d bought it. The purchase was finalized in October 2018, and they started renovating the lobby in 2019.
Lauren, who owns the building at 140 N. Higgins Ave. that’s home to PaddleHeads Post, had been handling events booked at the ballroom on the Florence’s second floor, but it was only recently that she’s taken over full management of the building in a more hands-on way. Once she and Livingston started working together on it, their passion for it, they say, has grown exponentially. They’re both there every day — working shifts at the bar, figuring out renovation and interior work that needs to be done, and laying the groundwork for when the new tenants move in.
“We want to bring people in,” Taylor says. “I’d love to have all the historical photos displayed, and whenever we do new projects, we’re always taking it back to the Art Moderne style and making sure it’s modernized and historical.”
Their latest project is turning the former Catalyst kitchen space, just past the coffee/cocktails bar, into a cocktail lounge serving drinks and small plates (type of food: TBD) and featuring a screen for movies.
And there’s a lot more potential, too. Lauren gives me a tour of the basement, which once housed a theater stage she says was called The Bitterroot Theater, and an underground parking area that had pigeonhole parking — a mechanical system where cars were lifted on a platform and inserted into multi-level honeycomb stalls using hydraulic lifts.
Taylor and Livingston say the owners of the other shops inside the Florence have been helping out, too — running social media, creating a Florence building newspaper with the history of the place written up inside. Talking with a few other folks — office workers on the upper floor who’ve come down to the lobby for coffee — you can tell people are excited to see the place reinvigorated.
“There’s this stupid, stupid saying that’s like, ‘If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life,’” Livingston says with a smile. “And I have never felt that more than I do now.”
