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The building has been used as a church, feed store, art house, coffee house, dance studio, locksmith's shop, beauty shop, and shoe factory. Later moved in 1971 from original location on the west side of Adams, between College and Park, to just east of the Capitol on Apalachee Parkway. Added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 24, 1971 and opened as a museum in 1984.

Accompanying note on back: "Florida's first chartered bank occupied this building at 106 South Adams Street, which was built in 1830's. It was also headquarters of the Freedman's Bank, to which former slaves in reconstruction days looked in vain for the 40 acres and a mule they thought they had been promised. Drawing by Jo Stripling."

The Union Bank building was built ca. 1830 by William Williams. It was chartered in 1832 or 1833 under the organization of John G. Gamble. It was designed to help planters. The bank failed with the collapse of the land boom in 1837, and the bank had its banking powers suspended by a legislative act in 1843. It operated as a Freedman's bank from just after the Civil War, until 1879.