For years the Lurleen Wallace Office Building was known simply as “The State Office Building”. It was designed by the prestigious firm of Warren, Knight & Davis of Birmingham to compliment the Public Safety Building it faces, and was completed in 1954. Local architects supposedly had the job but were supplanted after a political dustup. It was renamed for Gov Lurleen in 1991. The view is taken from the in front of the Capitol grounds, but looks are deceiving: you enter on the 4^th Floor, and exit at the rear on the First.

Right, Lurleen and George, ca 1970, as he campaigned for President on a 3^rd Party ticket. George Jr, State Treasurer a dozen years ago, looks away. Lurleen ran for governor as her husband’s stand-in in 1968, because he could not succeed himself per Alabama law at that time. She was a country girl from Tuscaloosa County, whose daddy was a sometime farmer, more often a bargeman on the Black Warrior River. Poor Lurleen won the election, but died of cancer 16 months into her term; she was succeeded by Lt. Gov Albert Brewer. Politics were vicious  back then; I still carry the scars.

-Charles Humphries