Exploring Montgomery

The storytelling continues… a collection of stories and photos from Exploring Montgomery!

Monthly Archives: March 2018

At 2525 Churchill Drive, as it exists today. It was built in 1956 as part of the School Board’s frantic effort to close the backlog created by the Depression, then WW II. Back then the Bear Clan had opened Gay Meadows Subdivision, donated 6-acres of it for a new Presbyterian […]

Minnie Bear Elementary School

March 30, 2018 in Education tagged bear / elementary / minnie / school

The Fuller & Dees Gold Mine . . . still stands at 3736 Atlanta Highway. In 1960, Millard Fuller (ex baseball pitcher) and Morris Dees (ex political operator), were enterprising students at the U of A Law School. Soon thereafter the pair settled in Montgomery, started a modest law practice. […]

Fuller & Dees Gold Mine

March 26, 2018 in Education tagged dees / fortis / fuller

At 1000 East Fairview, more particularly located in the tiny triangle formed by the 5-Points intersection of Fairview, Cloverdale Road and Woodley. Parker is my nephew, and I am most proud of the very successful business he has built. But us old timers live in the past, and when I […]

Parker Smith’s Laundry & Cleaners

March 23, 2018 in Commercial tagged cleaner / laundry / parker / smith

The Archibald Tyson place… the west side of which was sold off circa 1965 to become Tyson Manor, Montgomery’s premier nursing home for decades. And the east side, including this manor house, became St James School circa 1970. This house served as the school administrative building (Frazer Hall); a classroom […]

Archibald Tyson Place

March 19, 2018 in Education / Residential tagged archibald / st james / tyson

It’s origin goes back to Dr. William Baldwin, a respected medical doctor of 150 years ago, who also founded what is now the Montgomery piece of Regions Bank. Baldwin built the “Four Sister Houses” on South Perry, just two houses up from his own townhouse. His daughter Jennie, one of […]

Hazel Hedge Entrance

March 16, 2018 in Places and Things / Residential tagged entrance / hazel hedge

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

March 12, 2018 in Education / Government tagged apls / library

The ground around the Chappell House . . . at 1020 Maxwell Boulevard (nee Bell Street) is more interesting than the structure itself. An Alabama Indian town existed on this site as late as 1775. In 1819 this dirt was part of the Alabama Town which joined New Philadelphia to […]

Wharton-Chappell House

March 9, 2018 in Commercial / Residential tagged chappell / historic registry / housing / wharton

At 900 Bell Street (now Maxwell Boulevard). The Army is a Protestant Church based, international movement started in London in 1865. Its Montgomery headquarters moved out onto Bell Street in the early 1970s, and some years later replaced its original building at that site with this (almost too elegant) structure. […]

Salvation Army Headquarters

March 5, 2018 in Commercial tagged army / headquarters / salvation

The original Whitfield Memorial Methodist Church . . . at 2000 Woodley Road, now a Christian Science Church. It was built in the early 1950s, but less than a decade later Whitfield decided its site was too small and too close to First Methodist, so it relocated out onto Fisk […]

Whitfield Memorial Methodist Church

March 2, 2018 in Religious tagged church / methodist / whitfield