This 1907 house, located on South Perry Street, has been Alabama’s Governor’s Mansion for almost 60 years now-despite numerous attempts to move it elsewhere to escape a decaying neighborhood. At ”Big Jim” Folsom’s urging, the State bought the place in 1950, paying $100,000, the most that had ever been paid for a Montgomery residence.  Gordon Persons was the first governor to occupy the place, and to celebrate his inauguration he invited the public to an open house to view their new acquisition; the event drew a crowd of 6,000. At that time Perry Street was the US Highway route through Montgomery, ere you were motoring thru to Atlanta, Mobile, Birmingham, Tallahassee or Jackson.

At left, this South Perry Street “Beaux Brownstone” became Alabama’s first governor’s mansion in 1911. Before that, our chief executives lived in private homes or stayed in a hotel. It was built in 1906 by Moses Sable, whose family business morphed into today’s Sable Scrap Steel Company. Jim Folsom, who had seven children, was the last governor to occupy the place, and he felt it was too small (wonder why?). Subsequent to that use it was the State Military Department, and in 1959 it was sold to a new private school called Montgomery Academy. The structure was demolished in 1963 to make way for I-85.

See link for more history : http://governor.alabama.gov/governors-mansion/mansion-history/

-Charles Humphries