located in the Forest Hills subdivision (takes a map to find it), was a 1950s outreach of Capitol Heights Baptist. Today it is one of the largest churches in our city. Its sanctuary was built in 1965, as one step in a 30 year client relationship forged by my partner, […]

Eastern Hills Baptist Church

located in the woods just off Perry Hill Road at its juncture with Interstate I-85. California style. This is the initial building of a 9-building campus, probably planted in the mid 1980s. The Alabama Mental Health Dept was located out here in ca 1989, until it was brought back downtown […]

Interstate Office Park

at 5780 Vaughn Road, started as a dream in 1991 when Trinity Presbyterian member, Ida Belle Young, donated 40 acres of her meadowland for the purpose of starting a new church. Two years later the church was organized, and its first worship service was held in the Trinity School Cafeteria. […]

Young Meadows Presbyterian Church

The first of the six white concrete buildings that surround the State Capitol. You should ask how Archives ever got the first building. Well, it was like this: Marie Bankhead Owen 1869-1954 was instrumental in forming Alabama’s Archives Department in 1901, the first of its kind in the nation. She […]

The Archives and History Building

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at 1803 Mulberry, was founded in the 1940s, and was thriving when this sanctuary was built in 1956. It was the last job done by WMP, my business partner of neigh 50 years, before he and I left our former employer to start our own practice. At that time, the […]

Forest Park Baptist Church

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The vast but empty ARONOV BUILDING . . . stands at 474 South Court, bereft of its former glory, when it was the most important privately owned building in Montgomery. It was built circa 1966, and by 1970 it was the leased home of the US Social Security offices, the […]

Aronov Building

located on the NW corner of the 5-Points formed by the Fairview, Cloverdale Rd-Woodley intersection. It was founded ca 1932, and its first building faced Fairview. The church closed its doors some 80 years later, and the structure is slated to become the Cloverdale Playhouse, which will feature amateur theater […]

Cloverdale Christian Church

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22,000 seats; eight stories high; looms over I-85. $50,000,000 budgeted, but definitely ran over. Part of $250-million in ongoing campus projects. So much construction traffic that old men are at risk when they go on campus to take pics. -Charles Humphries

ASU Stadium

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I passed by this simple little California Mission Revival at 1639 Gilmer Avenue lots of times before it caught my attention. Belatedly, I determined that it was built by Alvin B Weil, of the renowned family that constituted Montgomery’s internationally known Weil Brothers Cotton Brokers. Isadora Weil, who immigrated from […]

Weil Brothers Cotton Brokers

Standing in the shadow of our State Capital. Albert was elected State attorney general in 1953 on a platform to clean up Phoenix City, an Alabama den of sin and inequity that served Ft Benning, Georgia, the huge Army base just across the river from PC. The Phoenix City mob […]

Albert Patterson

A postwar classic Greek Revival, considered to be the jewel of Montgomery’s historic Garden District. Probably built about the time of World War I, when Hull Street was inching its way South, and this was the last house. During the 1930s it was the home of Ray Rushton, who in […]

The Anderson House

At 440 Dalraida Road was built in 1954, but today it shines like a new penny. It was one of the first group of schools hurriedly constructed in the early 1950s. At the time Dalraida Road was only a dirt street, but the area was booming and the need was […]

Dalraida Elementary School

Sits at the South end of our State Capitol, right at the apex of the Avenue of Flags. The original Liberty Bell is situated at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and supposedly it was rung in July of 1776 to announce the first reading of our Declaration of Independence. It had […]

Alabama’s Liberty Bell Replica

High up in the once elegant Cottage Hill District, at 544 Martha Street, stands the Dowe Cottage . . . the 1866 home of Irish immigrants Mike and Mary Dowe. The house was built soon after the Civil War, as part of a neighborhood trend away from grand mansions of […]

Dowe Cottage

Located just North of Jackson Hospital, between Forest Avenue and Mulberry Street. Ribbon cutting was held back in December 2011. It cost $15-million, of which our City and County Govts each put in over a mil. It is one of 15 such centers serving South-Central Alabama. This center is expected […]

River Region Health Center

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Here, at the corner of South Decatur and High Streets, stands the last remnant of Capital City Laundry, for most of a century the laundry king of Montgomery. In 1970, Capital City boasted 11 branches, and its only real competitor, Empire-Rouse, had but 8 sites. On this corner, each one […]

Capital City Laundry

Behold the remnant of the once grand Circuit City Store . . . at 500 Eastdale Loop (behind Max Credit Union). The Eastdale store opened with great fanfare circa 1990, a wonderland of electronic magic, with plenty of clerks, all real computer geeks with whom you could discuss a purchase. Circuit […]

Old Circuit City Store

When you approach the Capitol via the grand steps that lead up from Dexter Avenue, you find the larger-than-life statue of CSA President Jefferson Davis on your left, and standing across from Davis, on your right, is this bronze of Dr. John Allan Wyeth. . . 1845 – 1922. Wyeth […]

Dr. John Allan Wyeth

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At the intersection of South Court and our derelict Southern Boulevard. Fifty years ago there was no Interstate route thru Montgomery, and this was the highway travel path. Montgomery’s center of commercial and construction activity was along this strip, and the “88” was the keenest structure in the area. It […]

88 Building

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Out on Pike Road, built circa 1825. The Marks family moved here from the renowned Broad River Valley of NE Georgia, where my ggggg GF Dionysius Oliver had founded the doomed town of Petersburg in 1786. The Marks clan was part of the group of Virginians who moved to the […]

Marks Plantation House

At the edge of the campus facing Taylor Road (I struggle with that name; I suppose it is the antithesis of “illness”). The interior (campus side) view looks fairly routine, but the Taylor Road side (pictured) almost looks like it might take flight. The facility has 73,000 square ft of […]

AUM Wellness Center

This crisply detailed, well-kept home at 1944 South Hull Street has an Italianate feel, and probably dates back to the late 1920s. When I moved here 60 years ago, I knew this as the home of Charles Voltz, general manager of the then still prestigious Algernon Blair construction company; Blair […]

Charles Voltz Home

You would never believe this (I almost didn’t), but this poor relic of a once grand plantation house, was where Sir George Waller grew up circa 1900. This structure, until just recently an AUM bookstore, stands on Taylor road opposite the University, giving no hint of its grandeur of a century […]

Sir George Waller

The announcement by AUM of its upcoming Clifford & Virginia Durr Lecture Series gave me cause to post this picture of that couple’s rented home during Montgomery’s turbulent civil rights era. The house is at #2 Felder Avenue, located on the corner at Court Street, and was built ca 1915. It […]

Clifford & Virginia Durr

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Was built ca 1890, and is Queen Anne style, with wonderful orange pressed brick, dominated by an unusual central tower. It is one of the very few large houses built in the historic Cottage Hill District during the latter part of the 1800s. Many pre-Civil War mansions were constructed up […]

The Mills House

Out on the Mobile Highway, primarily a men’s shelter and outreach for and to the poor and homeless in Montgomery. It serves 1200 meals a week, and provides shelter to over 75/night. The “residents” prepare and deliver meals to the homeless throughout the city. The Mission is Presbyterian (PCA) affiliated […]

Friendship Mission

At 11 Capitol Parkway in the Capitol Heights Historic District, is one of the more interesting houses there. It is mostly Craftsman Style or American Foursquare, which I have never heard of, built circa 1912, and it incorporates the generous, livable front porch and single dominant roof dormer common to […]

Oliver Clapp House