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

The unit moved there around the turn of the Century, after a 35-year stint on Ripley Street, opposite Saint Margaret’s Hospital (today that site is part of the State motor pool). The Red Cross was founded in 1881, gained prominence during WW I when it went along as part of […]

American Red Cross Offices

In 1954 there were only three banks in Montgomery, and all three sat side by side on Commerce Street downtown. That year two of the three, First National and Union, began a race to build the first branch bank. PT&N Architects saddled up with First, and SS&A Architects was hired […]

Regions Cloverdale Branch

The flags form the circular drive which enables dignitaries to be dropped off at the South Entrance to our State Capitol. Each pole displays the State Flag of a sister state, and at the bottom of each pole is a native stone of that State engraved with its name. The […]

Avenue of Flags

2
Built in 1966, the facility was a fulfilled dream of long time Hospital Administrator, Sister Scholastica, back when St Margaret’s stood alone as the premier hospital in South Central Alabama, before neighborhood decay, local crime and an over-reaching ministry brought it down. Today the structure is owned by RSA, and […]

St. Margaret’s School of Nursing

Those who have missed it all, should revisit the Riverfront! The City has put tourist-friendly signs everywhere, black lamp posts, black bollards, even an arch sign over the old cotton-bale tunnel leading down to a former river steamer wharf. I think the sign was inspired by the 1910 sign that […]

Riverfront

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

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

This small, little noticed, run-down structure marks one of the most remarkable success stories in the history of Montgomery. In 1888, 15-year old Victor Tulane walked barefoot from Wetumpka to Montgomery, clutching his $15 savings. By age 35, this young Black man had built this Victorian grocery store, at one […]

Victor Tulane Grocery

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

1
as seen from under the old L&N train shed. Its bow-string truss spans 125-feet over the CSX tracks, which even today carry considerable RR traffic. The left elevator/stair tower is an appendage of the City’s new “Intermodal Parking Deck” , and the right end “view” tower, located on the river […]

Riverfront Access Bridge

At 2525 Churchill Drive, as it exists today. It was built in 1956 as part of the School Board’s frantic effort to close the backlog created by the Depression, then WW II. Back then the Bear Clan had opened Gay Meadows Subdivision, donated 6-acres of it for a new Presbyterian […]

Minnie Bear Elementary School

The Fuller & Dees Gold Mine . . . still stands at 3736 Atlanta Highway. In 1960, Millard Fuller (ex baseball pitcher) and Morris Dees (ex political operator), were enterprising students at the U of A Law School. Soon thereafter the pair settled in Montgomery, started a modest law practice. […]

Fuller & Dees Gold Mine

At 1000 East Fairview, more particularly located in the tiny triangle formed by the 5-Points intersection of Fairview, Cloverdale Road and Woodley. Parker is my nephew, and I am most proud of the very successful business he has built. But us old timers live in the past, and when I […]

Parker Smith’s Laundry & Cleaners

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

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

The APLS (Alabama Public Library Service) is actually two-story and deceptively large, was built 1976, and is a separate State Department created to assist (and rule over) public libraries throughout Alabama. It was started way back in 1939, probably by Marie Bankhead Owen, as a small arm of her Archives […]

Alabama Public Library Service

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

At 900 Bell Street (now Maxwell Boulevard). The Army is a Protestant Church based, international movement started in London in 1865. Its Montgomery headquarters moved out onto Bell Street in the early 1970s, and some years later replaced its original building at that site with this (almost too elegant) structure. […]

Salvation Army Headquarters

The original Whitfield Memorial Methodist Church . . . at 2000 Woodley Road, now a Christian Science Church. It was built in the early 1950s, but less than a decade later Whitfield decided its site was too small and too close to First Methodist, so it relocated out onto Fisk […]

Whitfield Memorial Methodist Church

Officially at 1255 Madison Avenue, but as you can see, it’s actually tucked into the back left corner of the Paterson Field parking lot. Two forsaken entities side by side, the TV studio on the left, the edge of the baseball stadium on the right. Alabama Public Television was established […]

WAIQ TV Studios

Poor, forsaken, Paterson Field Baseball Stadium . . . on Madison Avenue, directly across from Cramton Bowl. It was built in 1949; its 7,000 capacity made it an impressive facility back then. In its heyday it was home field for the reincarnated Montgomery Rebels, a Class AA minor league affiliate […]

Paterson Field

The Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter . . . at 2911 Woodley Road, anchors the Southern tip of the triangular shaped Gay Meadows subdivision, almost touching Southern Boulevard. The church was carefully crafted to resemble its former Carpenter Gothic home in the once elegant Cottage Hills District. The Holy […]

Holy Comforter

1
This rather ordinary metal building at 6000 Monticello Drive may not deserve much attention, but it holds big memories for some of us. It was put up in the early 1970s, and for well over a decade it was the home of the Lampliter Dinner Theater. It featured tiered seating […]

Lampliter Dinner Theater

built this structure at 1021 Madison Avenue (directly opposite the Bibb Graves Armory) in the early 1950s, complete with the awful insertion of glass block. But despite that faux pas, it has this slight Federal Style feel, and appears somewhat staid to be a Shriner redoubt. I do understand that […]

Alcazar Shrine

I must pay homage to the D W Moody Hardware Store. Moody hardware stores have been important fixtures in Montgomery as long as I have lived here. Soon after he returned home from WW II, Dempsey Moody opened this store, and despite numerous setbacks, he refused to surrender. DW did […]

D W Moody Hardware Store

1
on the corner of Federal Drive and Coliseum Boulevard. The site of the successful flea-markets being held these days on the second Saturday of each month. According to reports, these monthly affairs have been so well attended that they may well save this farmers market site. -Charles Humphries

State Farmers Market Equipment Shed