Commercial

Baptist South Entrance
A huge complex, 450beds. Its initial unit was built circa 1963 by Winton Blount forces. By then his real contracting outfit had already grown too large to compete for Montgomery work, so Winton formed MidSouth Contractors, which won the job. That company turned out to be a real disaster and […]

Baptist Hospital South

 in Commercial  tagged baptist / hospital
Inside Stadium
… at the corner of Tallapoosa and Coosa Streets, is surely the centerpiece of Montgomery’s riverfront development. The home of the Montgomery Biscuits. Opened in 2004 with a capacity of 6,000 fans.  It is said to be the best utilization of an existing building in stadium design, of any minor league […]

Riverfront Stadium

 in Commercial  tagged biscuits / riverfront / stadium
Brew Pub
Here at 12 West Jefferson Street, only a short block from the Biscuit Stadium, stands the Brew-Pub, now part of the Riverfront development. The building was constructed in 1913 as a heavy equipment storage facility by the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio Railroad. It is of brick bearing-wall construction, with plank […]

Brew Pub

 in Commercial  tagged brew / pub / railyard
Colonial Bank Downtown
…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, […]

Colonial Bank Downtown

 in Commercial  tagged bank / colonial / downtown
Colonial Bank East
Poor Colonial Bank, which fled downtown, only to fall on its face two years later. Below you see its new 210,000 sf headquarters out East, next to the Technacenter, with BB&T banners covering the name. Colonial was the only bank with its home in Montgomery, ergo a source of much […]

Colonial Bank East

 in Commercial  tagged bank / colonial / east
Seed and Feed
“Seed and Feed”, that’s what we called it for the last 30+ years. This nice little building on Dexter was built by the Crenshaw family in 1907 –their family crest is built into the frieze. For years it was Brown Printing Co. (see below), and then circa 1960 it turned […]

Seed and Feed

 in Commercial  tagged brown / feed / printing / seed
Kress Monroe 1
Oh Kress, how sad you look standing in the decay of lower Dexter. S. H. Kress was founder of one of the early dime-store chains that dominated our country 50 years ago. Most of them are now gone. Kress, different from all the others, believed that his stores should incorporate […]

S. H. Kress Store

 in Commercial  tagged art deco / elsaja / kress
Garrett Coliseum
Behold our once splendid, but now rundown, State Coliseum, bereft of its former glory. Its construction began in 1949, and as an architectural student I went on field trips to Montgomery to gape at the amazing concept. The structure’s circular plan is 340-feet in diameter, and its barrel arch concrete […]

Garrett Colisuem

 in Commercial  tagged coliseum / garrett