ALICO Building
Coordinates: 31°33′25″N 97°07′55″W / 31.557°N 97.132°W
The ALICO Building is a 22-story office building in downtown Waco, Texas, United States, located on Austin and 5th Streets. It was built in 1910 by the architectural firm Sanguinet & Staats and associate architect Roy Lane, for the Amicable Life Insurance Company at a cost of $755,000. It was completed in only one year. It is also one of the first skyscrapers in Texas (the first, the 14-story Praetorian Building in Dallas, having been completed just the previous year[1]).
The building is today owned by the American-Amicable Life Insurance Company of Texas (a subsidiary of Industrial Alliance) and remains the tallest building in Waco by far. The acronym "ALICO" is spelled in red neon letters on the top floor and can be seen for many miles.
The ALICO Building was one of the few downtown office buildings that survived the 1953 Waco tornado outbreak. It swayed several feet when the tornado hit it directly, but its steel frame structure allowed it to survive the winds.
In 1965, Amicable Life Insurance Company and American Life Insurance Company merged to become the American-Amicable Life Insurance Company.
Alico, the former international life insurance subsidiary of AIG that was sold to MetLife, based out of Wilmington, Delaware, with no US domestic business, is a different company.
