BGuthrie Photos: AL -- Montgomery

AL -- Montgomery:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. MONT_161108_001.JPG: The Dowe Houses The three Dowe houses are a reminder of the residential neighborhood that existed here in the 19th century. The main family residence, dating from 1863, was originally designed as an Italianate-style "raised cottage." But in 1908, the high porch, approached by twin curving stairs, was replaced by the present two-story columned portico. The house was built for John Dowe, an Irish-born grocer and confectioner, his wife Joanna, and their several children. Descendants continued to live here for nearly 150 years. The last member of the family to occupy the house was John Dowe III, who died in 2007 at the age of 97. (Continued on other side)
2. MONT_161108_013.JPG: Naval Heroes of the War of 1812 Dexter Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama The six streets which cross Dexter Avenue between Court Square and the State Capitol are named for Oliver Hazard Perry, James Lawrence, Thomas Macdonough, Issac Hull, Stephen Decatur and William Bainbridge, all naval officers of the War of 1812. Perry commanded American forces on Lake Erie in the War of 1812. There he won a decisive victory over the British on September 10, 1813, which gave control of the Great Lakes to the United States. Lawrence was captain of the frigate Chesapeake which engaged the British Navy frigate Shannon in a fierce battle on June 1, 1813. Mortally wounded by small arms fire, he ordered "Don't give up the ship!" as he was carried below. Macdonough commanded the American naval forces that defeated the British Navy at the Battle of Lake Champlain in 1814, forcing the British to retreat to Canada, a move which contributed to ending the war. (Continued on other side)
3. MONT_161108_016.JPG: Naval Heroes of the War of 1812 Dexter Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama (Continued from other side) Hull commanded the American frigate Constitution when she engaged and defeated the British frigate Guerriere and won for the Constitution the name "Old Ironsides" because she came out of the action with so little injury. Decatur commanded the United States when, on October 25, 1812, she engaged and captured the British frigate Macedonian. Bainbridge commanded the frigate Constitution when she took to sea on the second of her War of 1812 cruises, and destroyed the British frigate Java in battle on December 29, 1812. All six men were elected to honorary membership in the Society of the Cincinnati in recognition of their heroism at sea. This marker was placed by the Society of the Cincinnati, the nation's oldest patriotic organization, founded by George Washington and his officers at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War.
4. MONT_161108_020.JPG: The Capital City Guards 1885 - 1905 In July 1885, the state Adjutant General authorized the organization of a black infantry company known as the Capital City Guards. Joseph L. Ligon was elected captain. Over the next 20 years, the Capital City Guards were a source of tremendous civic pride in the African-American community. They participated in formal inspections, drills, and encampments, as well as in Emancipation Day parades and annual commencement exercises at Tuskegee Institute. Drill meetings were held at Dorsette Hall at 216 Dexter Avenue. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Capital City Guards, commanded by Capt. Abraham Calvin Caffey, helped form Co. A, Third Alabama Volunteer Regiment. Although Alabama's black regiment never saw foreign duty, it remained in service longer than any other volunteer unit in the state. The Capital City Guards was the only black militia unit remaining in service in Alabama after the Spanish-American War, remaining on detached service until it was disbanded in 1905. After the demise of the Capital City Guards, over 60 years would pass before Alabama would again admit African Americans into its National Guard.
5. MONT_161108_062.JPG: The Lightning Route In 1886, Montgomery became the first city in the Western Hemisphere to convert an entire street railway system to electricity. The Capital City Street Railway Co. initiated electric trolley service on one mile of the street car line the year before. Civil engineer J. A. Gaboury supervised installation of the system developed by Charles Van de Poele. The car line, fondly known as the "Lightning Route" operated until 1936. Investors in the mass transit system also were involved in the development of the early suburbs of Highland Park and Cloverdale, as well as the first public recreation area at Oak Park. (Continued on other side)
6. MONT_161108_065.JPG: Central Bank Building (Continued from other side) Designed by Philadelphia architect Stephen Decatur Button for William Knox, president of Central Bank of Alabama, this Renaissance Revival building emulated the Venetian palaces of the 16th century. Completed in 1856, it was praised by state newspapers as the first ironfront in Alabama. Central Bank, which generously supported the Confederacy, was bankrupt at the end of the Civil War. Other banks occupied the building until jewelers Klein and Son acquired and occupied it from 1923-1983. The building was restored for the Arts Council of Alabama in 1985.
7. MONT_161108_070.JPG: Decorative Lions Heads 1907-1978 -- Presented to Montgomery by First Alabama Bank of Montgomery, N.A. -- These decorative terra cotta lions heads, typical of the ornamentation used in commercial style architecture in the early part of the 20th century, were utilized by the First National Bank of Montgomery on the cornice of their 12 story building from 1907 to 1978. Organized on April 18, 1871, the first location of the bank was on Dexter Avenue which was then called Market Street. In 1975, the name of the bank was changed to First Alabama Bank of Montgomery, N.A. Extensive renovations to the 12 story building in 1978, including the removal of the lions heads, created a new look for First Alabama and the downtown Montgomery area.
8. MONT_161108_077.JPG: Court Square Fountain 1885 Placed by the City over Artesian Basin and crowned by Hebe, Goddess of Youth and Cup-bearer to the Gods. Fountain was cast by J.L. Mott Iron Works of New York. Restored by Robinson Iron of Alexander City in 1984 during the administration of Mayor Emory Folmar.
9. MONT_161108_080.JPG: City of Montgomery Two small villages, New Philadelphia, founded by Massachusetts lawyer Andrew Dexter in 1817, and East Alabama, established by Georgians led by John Scott in 1818, united in 1819 to form Montgomery, named for Revolutionary hero Gen. Richard Montgomery. Connecting at Court Square, the two towns' principal streets were Philadelphia's Market Street (Dexter Avenue) and East Alabama's Main Street (Commerce Street). First courthouse stood to west of artesian well which City enlarged in 1850s. Fountain erected in 1885. (Continue on other side)
10. MONT_161108_086.JPG: Court Square (Continue from other side) Historic hub for business in Montgomery. Exchange Hotel built in 1848 on NW corner of Commerce and Montgomery Streets; rebuilt 1906; demolished 1970s. Cast iron-fronted Central Bank of 1856 on NE corner of square; Winter Building, site of telegraph office in 1861, on SE corner since 1840s. Historic processions passing along Dexter Avenue to the Capitol included Jefferson Davis Inaugural, 2/18/1861; Gen. J. H. Wilson's Cavalry Corps, 4/12/1865; 167th Infantry Regt. Rainbow Division, 5/12/1919; Selma-Montgomery Civil Rights March, 3/25/1965.
11. MONT_161108_137.JPG: Winter Building Built in 1841 by John Gindrat to house the Montgomery branch of the Bank of St. Mary's. In 1854 was willed to his daughter, Mary Elizabeth, wife of Joseph Winter. On April 11, 1861, Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker sent telegram from second floor offices of Southern Telegraph Company to Charleston authorizing Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard to fire on Fort Sumter. Subsequent bombardment was first military action of War Between the States. Building placed on National Register of Historic Places 1972, and restored in 1978.
12. MONT_161108_141.JPG: Telegram Which Began War Between The States Montgomery, April 11, 1861 General Beauregard, Charleston: Do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter. If Major Anderson will state the time at which, as indicated by him, he will evacuate, and agree that in the meantime he will not use his guns against us unless ours should be employed against Fort Sumter, you are thus authorized to avoid the effusion of blood. If this or its equivalent be refused, reduce the fort as your judgment decides to be most practicable. L. P. Walker Sec. of War. C.S.A.
13. MONT_161108_158.JPG: Korean War 1950-1953 Our nation honors people who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and people they never met.
14. MONT_161108_164.JPG: Korean War United Nations: Dead -- 40,670 Wounded -- 104,280 Missing -- 4,116 Republic of Korea: Dead -- 137,899 Wounded -- 45,742 Missing -- 24,495 USA: Dead -- 36,940 Wounded -- 92,124 Missing -- 3,737 Alabama: Total record count of US military fatal casualties of the Korean War for Alabama is 700
15. MONT_161108_171.JPG: Respectfully dedicated to the memory of the men and women of Montgomery County who made the supreme sacrifice in World War Two, 1941-1945
16. MONT_161108_172.JPG: Freedom of Worship
17. MONT_161108_174.JPG: Freedom from Fear
18. MONT_161108_177.JPG: Freedom from Want
Wikipedia Description: Montgomery, Alabama
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama and is the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for Richard Montgomery, it is located on the Alabama River, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2013 Census, Montgomery has a population of 201,332. It is the second-largest city in Alabama, after Birmingham, and is the 115th largest in the United States. The Montgomery Metropolitan Statistical Area had a 2010 estimated population of 374,536. It is the fourth-largest in the state and 136th among United States metropolitan areas.

The city was incorporated in 1819 as a merger of two towns situated along the Alabama River. It became the state capital in 1846, representing the shift of power to the south-central area with the growth of cotton as a commodity crop of the Black Belt and the rise of Mobile as a mercantile port on the Gulf Coast. In February 1861, Montgomery was selected as the first capital of the Confederate States of America, until the seat of government moved to Richmond, Virginia, in May of that year. During the mid-20th century, Montgomery was a major center of events and protests in the Civil Rights Movement, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Selma to Montgomery marches.

In addition to housing many Alabama government agencies, Montgomery has a large military presence due to Maxwell Air Force Base; public universities Alabama State University, Troy University (Montgomery campus), and Auburn University at Montgomery; private colleges/universities Faulkner University and Huntingdon College; high-tech manufacturing, including Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama; and cultural attractions such as the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.

Two ships of the United States Navy have been named after the city, including USS Montgomery.

Montgomery has won several national awards: Best Historic City by USA Today, All-America City in 2014 by the National Civic League, "Top City For Job Growth" in 2014 by ziprecruiter.com, and the 'happiest city in Alabama.' Montgomery has also been recognized nationally for its downtown revitalization and new urbanism projects. It was one of the first cities in the nation to implement Smart Code Zoning.

History

Prior to European colonization, the left (east) bank of the Alabama River was inhabited by the Alibamu tribe of Native Americans. The Alibamu and the Coushatta, who lived on the west side of the river, were descended from the Mississippian culture. This civilization had numerous chiefdoms throughout the Midwest and South along the Mississippi and its tributaries, and had built massive earthwork mounds as part of their society about 950–1250 AD. Its largest location was at Cahokia, in present-day Illinois east of St. Louis.

The historic tribes spoke mutually intelligible Muskogean languages, which were closely related. Present-day Montgomery is built on the site of two Alibamu towns: Ikanatchati (Ekanchattee or Ecunchatty or Econachatee), meaning "red earth;" and Towassa, built on a bluff called Chunnaanaauga Chatty. The first Europeans to travel through central Alabama were Hernando de Soto and his expedition, who in 1540 recorded going through Ikanatchati and camping for one week in Towassa.

The next recorded European encounter occurred more than a century later, when an English expedition from Carolina went down the Alabama River in 1697. The first permanent European settler in the Montgomery area was James McQueen, a Scots trader who settled there in 1716. He married a high-status woman in the Coushatta or Alabama tribe. Their mixed-race children were considered Muskogean, as both tribes had a matrilineal system of property and descent. The children were always considered born into their mother's clan, and gained their status from her people.

In 1785, Abraham Mordecai, a war veteran from a Sephardic Jewish family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, established a trading post. The Coushatta and Alabama had gradually moved south and west in the tidal plain. After the French were defeated by the British in 1763 in the Seven Years' War and ceded control of their lands, these Native American peoples moved to parts of present-day Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, then areas of Spanish rule, which they thought more favorable than British-held areas. By the time Mordecai arrived, Creek had migrated into and settled in the area, as they were moving away from Cherokee and Iroquois warfare to the north. Mordecai married a Creek woman. When her people had to cede most of their lands after the 1813-14 Creek War, she joined them in removal to Indian Territory. Mordecai brought the first cotton gin to Alabama.

The Upper Creek were able to discourage most European-American immigration until after the conclusion of the Creek War. Following their defeat by General Andrew Jackson in August 1814, the Creek tribes were forced to cede 23 million acres to the United States, including remaining land in today's Georgia and most of today's central and southern Alabama. In 1816, the Mississippi Territory (1798–1817) organized Montgomery County. Its former Creek lands were sold off the next year at the federal land office in Milledgeville, Georgia.

The first group of European-American settlers to come to the Montgomery area was headed by General John Scott. This group founded Alabama Town about 2 miles (3 km) downstream on the Alabama River from present-day downtown Montgomery. In June 1818, county courts were moved from Fort Jackson to Alabama Town. Alabama was admitted to the Union in December 1819.

Soon after, Andrew Dexter, Jr., founded New Philadelphia, the present-day eastern part of downtown. He envisioned a prominent future for his town; he set aside a hilltop known as "Goat Hill" as the future site of the state capitol building. New Philadelphia soon prospered, and Scott and his associates built a new town adjacent, calling it East Alabama Town. Originally rivals, the towns merged on December 3, 1819, and were incorporated as the town of Montgomery.

Slave traders used the Alabama River to deliver slaves to planters as laborers to work the cotton. Buoyed by the revenues of the cotton trade at a time of high market demand, the newly united Montgomery grew quickly. In 1822, the city was designated as the county seat. A new courthouse was built at the present location of Court Square, at the foot of Market Street (now Dexter Avenue). Court Square had one of the largest slave markets in the South. The state capital was moved from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery, on January 28, 1846.

As state capital, Montgomery began to influence state politics, and it would also play a prominent role on the national stage. Beginning February 4, 1861, representatives from Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina met in Montgomery, host of the Southern Convention, to form the Confederate States of America. Montgomery was named the first capital of the nation, and Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President on the steps of the State Capitol. (The capital was later moved to Richmond, Virginia.)

On April 12, 1865, following the Battle of Selma, Major General James H. Wilson captured Montgomery for the Union.

In 1886 Montgomery became the first city in the United States to install city-wide electric street cars along a system that was nicknamed the Lightning Route. Residents followed the street car lines to settle in new housing in what were then "suburban" locations.

In the post-World War II era, returning African-American veterans were among those who became active in pushing to regain their civil rights in the South: to be allowed to vote and participate in politics, to freely use public places, to end segregation. According to the historian David Beito of the University of Alabama, African Americans in Montgomery "nurtured the modern civil rights movement." African Americans comprised most of the customers on the city buses, but were forced to give up seats and even stand in order to make room for whites. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Martin Luther King, Jr., then the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and E.D. Nixon, a local civil rights advocate, founded the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the boycott. In June 1956, the US District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson ruled that Montgomery's bus racial segregation was unconstitutional. After the US Supreme Court upheld the ruling in November, the city desegregated the bus system, and the boycott was ended.

In separate action, integrated teams of Freedom Riders rode South on interstate buses. In violation of federal law and the constitution, bus companies had for decades acceded to state laws and required passengers to occupy segregated seating in Southern states. Opponents of the push for integration organized mob violence at stops along the Freedom Ride. In Montgomery, there was police collaboration when a white mob attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in May 1961. Outraged national reaction resulted in the enforcement of desegregation of interstate public transportation.

Martin Luther King, Jr. returned to Montgomery in 1965. Local civil rights leaders in Selma had been protesting Jim Crow laws and practices that raised barriers to blacks registering to vote. Following the shooting of a man after a civil rights rally, the leaders decided to march to Montgomery to petition Governor George Wallace to allow free voter registration. The violence they encountered from county and state highway police outraged the country. The federal government ordered National Guard and troops to protect the marchers. Thousands more joined the marchers on the way to Montgomery, and an estimated 25,000 marchers entered the capital to press for voting rights. These actions contributed to Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to authorize federal supervision and enforcement of the rights of African Americans and other minorities to vote.

On February 7, 1967, a devastating fire broke out at Dale's Penthouse, a restaurant and lounge on the top floor of the Walter Bragg Smith apartment building (now called Capital Towers) at 7 Clayton Street downtown. Twenty-six people died.

In recent years, Montgomery has grown and diversified its economy. Active in downtown revitalization, the city adopted a master plan in 2007; it includes the revitalization of Court Square and the riverfront, renewing the city's connection to the river. Many other projects under construction include the revitalization of Historic Dexter Avenue, pedestrian and infrastructure improvements along the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, and the construction of a new environmental park on West Fairview Avenue.
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