built in 1858 by Jefferson Jackson to be his home, but it later served as the “Working Woman’s Home” for over 100 years. It stood on the SE corner of Adams and Union Streets, on the site now occupied by the new RSA Headquarters. In 1881 the house was purchased by a group of benevolent minded ladies to afford a place of refuge for needy families, and their action was a first evidence of such community concern in Montgomery. Within a few years the house was surrounded by cottages in which impoverished single mothers lived with their families. The structure, sans the cottages, now stands in Old Alabama Town and is the headquarters of the Central Alabama Community Foundation. The structure is highlighted on the map below.

This extract of an amazing 1887 Perspective Map of Montgomery is marked to indicate the location of the Working Woman’s Home depicted above, surrounded by the cottages; note that the cottages even extend across Alabama Street (now closed). You can see the State Capitol in the lower center of the extract.

Alabama governor Watts’ home (which later became the early Saint Margaret’s Hospital) is to the left of Moulton House across Ripley Street , and Jackson House (see Page 103) is atop a hill to its rear.

This remarkable perspective drawing actually covered virtually all of Montgomery as it existed in 1887.

-Charles Humphries