描述
**Jackson Tower**
**Art by:** Chris Hytha
**Story by:** Mark Houser
The Mississippi architect who designed this exemplary Art Deco highrise relocated his offices to its top floor from previous quarters three blocks away atop the Lamar Life Building. Though that skyscraper is only five years older, the two seem ages apart.
Leading the group of investors who commissioned this building was Edward Flowers, who had married the daughter of a sawmill and lumber baron and assumed control of the business after his father-in-law's death. Originally given a generic geographic moniker, the tower was rechristened in 1952, after a Jackson insurance company followed Claude Lindsley's lead and relocated from its own previous skyscraper headquarters across town.
Standard Life was acquired three decades later by a New Jersey insurer that eliminated its 159 local jobs and left the tower mostly vacant. But the name and electric sign stuck, and the property was eventually converted into apartments. Its brilliantly restored lobby of black and gold marble and nickel-plated copper deserves the description one newspaper gave at its grand opening, when hundreds of spectators endured a rainstorm to see for themselves "a labyrinth of beauty that the eye is unable to absorb in one glance."
