…stands at the corner of Commerce and Tallapoosa. By 1900, lower Commerce had become the wholesale center of central Alabama. The wide street was paved with Belgian granite ballast blocks. It was an impressive street, and the most impressive building on it was the 1891 Steiner-Lobman wholesale dry goods building. Nathan Lobman and Louis Steiner went into business together in 1871 peddling goods to small merchants in Pine Apple, Alabama. In 1891 the partners moved up to Montgomery and set up shop in this highly decorative pink and white corner store. In 1895, the right half was sold to Martin Teague and it became Teague Hardware. The two businesses continued in that location until the mid-1970s. Teague served as Mayor of Montgomery, and he and his son-in-law built the Gay-Teague Hotel directly across the street, the city’s tallest structure (later known as the Frank Lou Bldg, demolished 20-odd years ago. It was a sorry building). A coffin adorns the roof corner of the Steiner-Lobman half, along with an 8-foot statue of the Goddess Athena (protectress of architects –they need it). An anvil tops the Teague half.  Mary Ann Neeley says the coffin is actually a water tank mounted up there for fire emergency use.

I don’t care what they say; I’ve always believed the Steiners were up to no good, and somebody is in that coffin.

-Charles Humphries