The building remained a jail until 1966. A year later it became home to the Florida Department of State’s Division of Archives, History, and Records Management. Jim Berberich was one of four people who worked for the State Archives while it was located in the jail.[3] He remembers the cells, each with four bunks, two on each side, and some with remaining toilets in the middle of the floor. The cells housed the documents, photos, and artifacts of the state archives. The beds provided shelving, and the staff had keys to lock the cell doors to secure the collections. Tables occupied the center of the hallways for more storage or the processing of collections. While the building was temperature controlled, it had no fumigator or humidity control, which put the collections at risk. Berberich recalled one incident when a preservationist was processing items from Florida’s Territorial period and the exposed  documents crumbled into pieces. He and the preservationist sat in the jail’s hallway trying to put the pieces back together. Nor was it easy for the public or a governmental agency to access the records because little space existed to examine the materials.  Usually the staff  transferred the relevant boxes to another location for someone to use.

The building was also home to the offices of Florida’s State Museum and  Bureau of Historic Preservation, each with two to three employees. The offices and collections of the state archeologists resided on the ground floor. All the departments and their collections moved to the R.A. Gray Building when it opened in the 1970s, as did  the State Library, which left cramped quarters in the basement of the Florida Supreme Court. The process was slow as archivists fumigated and organized all the documents when moving. The Department of State did not fully vacate the former jail until 2007.

[3] James (Jim) Berberich, interview by James McAllister, February 22, 2015, transcript.