Exploring Montgomery

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

Shakespeare Theatre — …began as a Summer program up in Anniston AL in 1972, on the stage of an old high school. It had remarkable early success, but was about to expire ten years later. Wynton & Carolyn Blount offered to build it a grand new theatre if the organization would move to […]

The Shakespeare Festival Theater

ACC — on Adams Avenue, was constructed by RSA in 1989 in the same contract with the RSA Plaza. The ACC was conceived as an appropriate venue in which to assemble all the State’s industry seeking arms, and to provide for them all the tools necessary for their success. Besides ADO, ADECA, […]

Alabama Center for Commerce

St Judes — …at 2048 West Fairview was constructed in 1937 as the first step in Father Harold Percell’s dream to come South and erect “a city dedicated to the religious, charitable, educational, and industrial advancement of the Negro people”. Percell had architectural talent, and he felt that red brick Romanesque was the […]

St. Jude’s Roman Catholic Church

Baptist East — at 400 Taylor Road is a 150-Bed, short term, acute care medical facility, probably established around 1990, and is expected to become the dominant medical center in central Alabama one day, as Baptist South suffers the same geographic and economic disadvantages that felled old Saint Margaret’s 30 years ago. And […]

Baptist Hospital East

STJ_Entrance — …is an independent nonsectarian private school located at 6010 Vaughn Road. It serves over 1,000 students, and this is its administrative building, situated at the head of a 25 acre campus. The school was founded in 1955 by Dr Stanley Frazer, pastor of St James Methodist Church, then located on […]

St. James School

Museum of Fine Arts — …moved from its previous quarters on McDonough Street downtown into this structure in the Blount Park in 1988. The museum was founded in 1930 and is the oldest fine arts museum in Alabama. It draws 160,000 visitors a year. Although its most outstanding holdings are built around the 41-piece American […]

Museum of Fine Arts

Auburn Montgomery — …a 5,000 student branch campus of Auburn University, is situated on a 500-acre campus seven miles east of downtown. It was officially founded by an Act of the State Legislature in 1968, but its roots go back to 1936, when the University of Alabama operated the entity as an extension […]

Auburn University Montgomery (AUM)

Gov Thomas Jones House — The huge scale of the adjacent ACC office building makes the Jones Victorian-style home look like a dollhouse. The house was built ca 1855, but Thomas Jones acquired it in 1866, right after the war. He purchased it from a local lawyer, Daniel Troy. Troy owned the house for only […]

Gov. Thomas Jones House

…built in 1835 for William Sayre, one of the founders of First Presbyterian Church, Montgomery’s first organized church. It is perhaps “Federal Style Colonial”, with Italianate detail added circa 1850. The house originally stood at the corner of Bibb and Lee Streets, and was moved to its present location in […]

First White House of the CSA

Gayle Planetarium — at Oak Park, built in 1966 under the administration of Earl James, and named for “Tacky” Gayle, the last of the Gunter Machine mayors. Tacky held the office for eight years, until Earl James beat him in 1958. My memories include discussions with WMP as to how to build the […]

Gayle Planetarium

Blount Design — This 250-acre park is home to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, The Alabama Shakespeare Festival and the Hannah Daye Ridling Bark Park. The park features ponds, miles of walking trails, a natural amphitheater and picturesque scenery. The park is open seven days a week and closes at sundown except for […]

Blount Cultural Park

Federal Courthouse — Completed 1933 on the site of the Court Street Methodist Church –which moved itself to the new Cloverdale suburb and became First Methodist. The 5-story structure faces Church Street and was designed in Renaissance Style by Montgomery’s renowned architect, Frank Lockwood –probably his outstanding work. It was added to the […]

Federal Courthouse (Old Post Office)

Alabama_Governor's_Mansion — 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 […]

Governor’s Mansion

Montgomery Mall — The dead, dead Montgomery Mall . . . so convenient, so wonderful, in its day. The empty hulk stands at the intersection of McGehee Road and Southern Boulevard, a spot believed in 1970 to be the future epicenter of Montgomery. The Montgomery Fair, frightened by an inroad of Lovemans and […]

Montgomery Mall

Alfa ins — on Southern Boulevard, directly opposite Baptist Hospital South. The company was founded in 1946 by the Alabama Farmer’s Federation, which was started itself in 1921 to serve the political, social, insurance and agri-business needs of its members. ALFA primarily sells casualty insurance, but is also involved in real estate, construction, […]

ALFA Insurance Headquarters

Camp Sheridan — The old Camp Sheridan, active during WW-I, was located in North Montgomery on land that became the Kilby Prison reservation shortly after the war ended. The entire camp covered many square miles. For a variety of reasons, this war (which was going on long before the United States got into […]

Camp Sheridan

Post Office — on Winton Blount Boulevard, appropriate because Winton was US Postmaster General back when Nixon was president. This structure was dedicated in 1989, and it has this Byzantine flavor, strange for a Federal building. Maybe it’s because Red Blount’s company built the King Saud University in Saudi Arabia (at $2-billion), the […]

Main Post Office

Blount Bark Park — … located in Blount Park and named after Hannah Ridling, this dog park has it all. It has everything a dog and his best friend could want, fountains, wash stations, streams, walking trails, bridges, gazeebos, benches and the list goes on. The main entrance leads to two smaller entrances; one […]

Hannah Daye Ridling Bark Park

Jones Law School — This view of the first block of Commerce Street conjures up so many stories. One of my favorites involves the Odyssey of the Jones Law School. The conversant amongst you will recall that the school was founded in 1928 by my very distant cousin, the omnipotent Judge Walter B Jones, […]

Jones Law School

…on East Boulevard is the CBS affiliate for South Central Alabama, with remote studios in Selma, Troy and Greenville. The station was started in 1960 as an ABC outlet in Selma by my one-time neighbors, the Brennan Brothers of Big-BAM fame. But after two decades of repeated sale of its […]

WAKA TV Studio

MA Bridge — The Montgomery Academy was founded in 1959 by a small group of well-off Montgomery families who were determined to provide a quality substitute for the doomed public school system. For the first few years it held classes on Perry Street in the former “Sable Governor’s Mansion“. Just ahead of I-85 […]

Montgomery Academy

AME Zion Church — …at 483 Holcombe Street, is home to the oldest African American congregation in our city, and deep within the structure is a part that qualifies as the oldest surviving church building in Montgomery. The church was planted by Court Street Methodist in 1850, and soon thereafter was offered the 1835 wood […]

Old Ship A.M.E. Zion Church

Bell Building — …has towered over Montgomery Street for 100 years now. Newton Bell, whose dream it was, died during the construction, but his son, N J Bell Jr, saw it to completion, and his son N J III managed the property until the late 1960s. The building was actually U-shaped, having had […]

Bell Building

Court Street Methodist — …the one that was demolished ca 1931 to make way for the new Post Office. It looks pretty grand to me. My mother-in-law was married in this church in 1925. The congregation moved out to the new suburb called Cloverdale and built the First Methodist Church that we know today. […]

Court Street Methodist Church

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

Eastchase — The highly successful 330-acre development was opened in 2002 as a joint endeavor of ALFA and Jim Wilson Associates. The center currently boasts 70+ stores and eateries, a hotel and an office building. Its open-air concept attracted high-end tenants from the outset, and its opening was the dagger thru the heart that […]

Eastchase Shopping Center

First Methodist Postcard — …claims to be the oldest organized church in Montgomery. For 100 years it stood on the downtown site now occupied by the Federal Court and our former main Post Office under the name Court Street Methodist. The church moved to this site in the suburb of Cloverdale in 1931, when […]

First United Methodist Church