Cox Furniture Warehouse
602 S. Main St., Gainesville, FLThe Cox Furniture Store is significant at the local level in the areas of Commerce and Architecture. The style and scale of the building reflect the early development of the Gainesville commercial district. The structure was built in 1887 as the Simonson Opera House and an entertainment center in downtown Gainesville until the 1920s. From 1939 to 1991 the building housed the largest and most successful furniture store in Gainesville. It is an excellent example of a masonry vernacular commercial building of the type constructed in the United States during the period from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
Local significance of the building:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1994.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.