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 and History Department. It became its own department some twenty years later, and soon relocated into its own tiny building on South Union, right across from the Archives & History building. Dr. David Bronner prevailed on the RSA to buy the modest property in 1975, on which he constructed the first of his seven green-top office buildings in our downtown. The Library Service had acquired a nice Federal Grant with which to build a new facility, and it happily left the confinement of the Capital Complex to enjoy the freedom and tranquility of Monticello Drive.

-Charles Humphries