…As seen across Court Square. The handsome granite-clad building on the right was the home office of Colonial, Montgomery’s only home bank, before it moved out to the Techna’ area off I-85 and died. However, us real old timers still look at this corner and think of the Exchange Hotel, which occupied this site for 125 years. Up until 1960 or thereabouts, Alabama legislators might go up to the Capitol to record their vote, but all the deals and decisions were made in the bars and smoke filled rooms of the Exchange. The building on the left, beyond the fountain, was built as a Pizitz Department Store ca 1965, That ill-advised venture into down-town Montgomery was a disaster, but Pizitz also opened a branch store in Eastdale.   My daughter Sally was a ‘teen “Pizitz Girl” in 1978.

-Charles Humphries