Government



The structure, now remodeled and expanded, was built some dozen years ago as the Advanced Medical Imaging Center. For the previous 65 years the Housing Authority had its home out on Bell Street, having grown out of the emergency housing development thrown up in the late 1930s to support the […]

Montgomery Housing Authority


The APLS (Alabama Public Library Service) is actually two-story and deceptively large, was built 1976, and is a separate State Department created to assist (and rule over) public libraries throughout Alabama. It was started way back in 1939, probably by Marie Bankhead Owen, as a small arm of her Archives […]

Alabama Public Library Service




built this structure at 1021 Madison Avenue (directly opposite the Bibb Graves Armory) in the early 1950s, complete with the awful insertion of glass block. But despite that faux pas, it has this slight Federal Style feel, and appears somewhat staid to be a Shriner redoubt. I do understand that […]

Alcazar Shrine










Crump Center
Oh, the irony of it all. A couple years ago the Crump Center, a City-operated redoubt for the Still-Agile-Elderly, was moved from its former smallish Elizabethan Style home on Highland Avenue, way out onto Federal (now Congressman Dickinson) Drive, past the Coliseum. Today the center holds forth in this huge, […]

Crump Center



Downtown Post Office
on Catoma Street sits directly opposite the Davis Building on the site of the old Davis Motor Co (whose mechanic wrecked my Pontiac in 1953, when he took it from the shop to run a personal errand).  This was built in 1977, during the Carter Administration, when our “real Post […]

Downtown Post Office





Kilby Prison 17
In 1970 the Old Kilby Prison was nearing its demise, but still in operation. It was Alabama’s Alcatraz, built 1922, huge, forbidding, located only 4 miles from downtown on a site that is now the NE corner of old Federal Drive and Coliseum Blvd. Its 20-foot high, 6-foot thick perimeter […]

Old Kilby Prison










Forensics Lab
on the corner of Norman Bridge and Carter Hill Roads, was completed recently. It anchors the SW corner of the ASU campus, and signals the conclusion of a political struggle that extended over a decade. For years Forensics was the underfunded stepchild of State government, and had to choose between […]

State Forensics Lab




County Health Department
at 3060 Mobile Highway was built by the County Commission in 1994. It is operated under the authority of the State Health Department (Mobile and Jefferson County Health Departments are independent). The first floor of this building is one of six primary health care centers in our county, and it […]

County Health Department



County Jails
  The new jail (on the right) connects to the old jail (on the left) via a bridge across McDonough Street. The new facility, with its 700 bed capacity, brings the total capacity up to 1100. That’s hard to believe, considering that for 30 years 1957-1986 our county jail capacity […]

County Jails