A Quick Visit to Fayette

Last August I posted an item about the visit my brother and I made to the Fayette Art Museum the month before. In this post I wanted to offer photos and information about the city of Fayette itself.

The town is located in northwest Alabama and is the seat of Fayette County. That county was created by the legislature on December 20, 1824, from parts of Marion and Tuscaloosa counties. The town of Fayette predates the county, having been incorporated in January 1821. The town had several different names until a November 1898 vote settled on the same name as the county. 

The city and county once depended largely on agriculture, but now various types of manufacturing employ over a third of workers. The population of Fayette in 2020 was 4329, and of the county 16, 321. One of the oldest businesses in Fayette is the Golden Eagle Syrup Manufacturing Company founded in 1928. 

Fayette's business district burned on March 24, 1911; structures destroyed included the county's sixth courthouse, which had cost $40,000 to construct. A new courthouse, costing $59.000, opened the following year. A roof and interior renovation in 1999 cost more than $2 million, a million of which was donated by a local philanthropist. Photographs of the sixth courthouse and the seventh one soon after construction can be seen in the Hughes book cited below.

More comments accompany some of my photographs. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Hughes, Delos. Historic Alabama Courthouses: A Century of their Images and Stories. NewSouth Books, 2017, pp 64-65

National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Alabama, eds. Early Courthouses of Alabama Prior to 1860. 1966, pp 30-31

Rumore, Samuel A. Jr. Building Alabama's Courthouses: Fayette County Revisited. The Alabama Lawyer 2000 March; 61(2): 104-105

We enjoyed a great lunch at Fannie's, surrounded by some local art. This eatery is in the same block as the courthouse. 

The courthouse lawn has a Civil War statue and the Fayette County Veterans Memorial 1990 that lists the county's casualties in World War I and II, Korea and Vietnam.

The Fayette Art Museum is located in this building, along with the Civic Center and the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame.

Art in the community and the schools is supported by the Sipsey Art Alliance formed in 2014.

Frogs can be spotted around town.

The Fayette Depot was originally constructed by Southern Railway in 1887; this similar structure of brick replaced the wooden one in 1913. Unfortunately, the museum was closed when we visited Fayette.