Exploring Montgomery

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

Residential

F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayer lived in this 1910 house at 919 Felder Avenue for a few months in 1931. I suspect their moving here was a ploy by the alocholic Scott to park his schizophrenic wife and move on with a new life in Hollywood. The […]

Zelda Museum

August 10, 2018 in Commercial / Residential tagged fitzgerald / museum / sayer / zelda

The home of John J Dowe and his progeny for a hundred years or more. It is noteworthy, not for what it is, but for what it once was. I had been told that this house was formerly a Victorian adorned Italianate design, which featured “Gorgas Home” curved steps leading […]

Dowe House

June 11, 2018 in Residential tagged dowe / historic registry

Up in the grand old Cottage Hills District, stands nonchalantly amongst its historic neighbors, just like it belonged there. And I guess it does. This unassuming youngster was built to be a Bed n’ Breakfast by Mark Waldo in 1987, and was designed to replicate a Victorian Cottage of 1887. […]

Red Bluff Cottage B&B

June 8, 2018 in Commercial / Residential tagged bed and breakfast / red bluff

This is what all the hoopla is about, with stories on TV and in the paper, announcing that this 105-year old structure is to be converted into 21 more downtown loft apartments. Good for the Foshees. The building was built in 1905 to hold the printing presses of the then […]

Printing Press Lofts

May 28, 2018 in Commercial / Residential tagged lofts / press / printing

The house can be seen off in the distance, through its front gate. That’s what it was in 1979, when a Prince of Saudi Arabia, an heir to the throne I believe, was given a slot to attend the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell’s Air University. His minions […]

Sheik’s House

May 25, 2018 in Residential tagged dennis / house / sheik

Certainly inspired by George Washington’s Virginia home, Mt Vernon, was built circa 1933. At the time it was the last house out on the Woodley Road as you headed off to Troy. Hardie was one of the owners of the highly successful McGehee Brothers Drug Store located downtown on the […]

Hardie McGehee House

May 7, 2018 in Residential tagged hardie / mcgehee

Stands on Mildred Street at the head of Goldthwaite. . a veritable jewel of the Cottage Hill Historic District. It is a modest Greek Revival mansion built circa 1850, with clapboard siding yet. I think it sat empty for the past 50 years, but at last someone is trying to […]

McBride-Screws-Tyson House

April 16, 2018 in Residential tagged mcbride / screws / tyson

Part of the Town of Pike Road endeavor. It takes its name from the double row of Oak trees which line the half-mile entrance drive. The center part of the structure was built circa 1830 by Alexander Carter, who expanded his small homestead into a plantation of 1780 acres. The […]

The Oaks

April 13, 2018 in Places and Things / Residential tagged oaks / pike road / plantation

It was built about 1966 on a parcel of the Archibald Tyson Estate, other grounds of which a short time later became the main campus of the Saint James School. In its heyday Tyson Manor was Montgomery’s premier nursing home, the society place to convalesce. In 1976 my own mother, who […]

Tyson Manor Nursing Home

April 6, 2018 in Commercial / Residential tagged home / manor / nursing / tyson

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 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

retirement home for the elderly, at 135 S Panama Street, stands directly behind Capitol Heights Baptist Church. It was built by the church in 1983, using Federal grant money. This is one of several massive structures that make up the complex. It nicely anchors the SE corner of Capitol Heights. […]

Capitol Heights Place

November 10, 2017 in Commercial / Residential tagged capitol heights

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

August 7, 2017 in Residential tagged brothers / california mission revival / cotton / frank lockwood / weil

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

July 31, 2017 in Residential tagged anderson / greek revival / ray rushton

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

July 21, 2017 in Residential tagged cottage / dowe

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

June 30, 2017 in Residential tagged arts and crafts / colonial / house / marks / pike road / plantation / thanksgiving visitor

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

June 23, 2017 in Residential tagged brent / charles / charlotte / italianate / springford / voltz

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

June 19, 2017 in Commercial / Education / Residential tagged aum / bookstore / george / jacks / sir / 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

June 16, 2017 in Residential tagged civil rights / clifford / durr / rosa parks / virginia

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

June 12, 2017 in Residential tagged mills / Queen Anne

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

June 5, 2017 in Residential tagged american foursquare / clapp / craftsman / oliver

Craftsman house — This house seems to be the first home built on Galena Ave in Old Cloverdale. It was probably constructed about 1912 for an O A Richardson. The house has the basic accoutrements of the classic Federal style, over which has been applied many of the features brought on by the […]

Craftsman House

April 24, 2017 in Residential tagged craftsman / federal / mertins / richardson

shearon elebash — This interesting old mansion at 805 Cloverdale Road sits at the south end of the huge but now vacant frontage that once held the estate of Coca-Cola magnet William A Bellingrath. The house had already endured several prior owners, but in the 1960s and ’70s the pictured structure was the […]

Shearon Elebash Residence

April 21, 2017 in Residential tagged elebash / governor / jeweler / shearon / singer

Tale of Two Sisters — This overgrown sadness at 3125 Cloverdale Road overlooks the currently popular Cloverdale-Idlewild “Bottom” Park, and it once was the home of Allen C Rankin. Back in 1940 Mr Rankin was general manager of the renowned Teague Hardware Store on Commerce Street, and he was the father of a most talented […]

Rankin – Tale of Two Sisters

April 10, 2017 in Residential tagged rankin / sing / sisters / tale / two / voice

Whitfield Mansion — It’s sometimes erroneously called the “Pickle Palace”, at 1506 South Perry Street, is Mediterranean Style and was built in 1920. Today it is the home of gambling tycoon Milton McGregor, who is wont to say,” You could be a winner too!” But the house, designed by the favorite of Montgomery’s […]

Whitfield Mansion

March 31, 2017 in Residential tagged lockwood / mansion / mediterranean / palace / pickle / whitfield

Robert Steiner — I think Robert Steiner Jr built this Colonial Revival, probably in the 1930s, but his son, Robert E Steiner III became HOH during the 1950s when his father died. Bob Jr & III were both members of the prestigious law firm of Steiner, Crum and Baker, which was founded in […]

Robert Steiner Residence

March 27, 2017 in Residential tagged colonial revival / robert / steiner