The Peninsular Telephone Company Building, also known as the Peninsula Telephone Company Building or the GTE Building is an historic three-story yellow brick building located at 1009 4th Avenue, West in

Bradenton, Florida Bradenton ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Manatee County, Florida, Manatee County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the city's population is 55,698. History Late 18th and early 19th centuries ...

. Built in 1925 for Peninsular, an independent

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

operating company based in

Tampa Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough County ...

which later became part of General Telephone (GTE), it was designed by local architect J. H. Johnson in the Commercial or Chicago School of architecture. Although not as ornate as most buildings of this style, it does have some ornamental features on its ground floor as well as a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

topping its third floor. After the phone company stopped having a local walk in customer service center, the street level windows were bricked in. Today the building is owned by

Manatee County Manatee County is a county in the Central Florida portion of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 US Census, the population was 399,710. Manatee County is part of the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its county s ...

and is used for storage. It is included in a walking tour of downtown Bradenton and is included in the city's master list of historic buildings.Florida History: Bradenton
/ref>

References

Telecommunications buildings in the United States Chicago school architecture in Florida Neoclassical architecture in Florida Commercial buildings completed in 1925 Buildings and structures in Bradenton, Florida 1925 establishments in Florida {{Florida-struct-stub