Some Alabama Highway Map Covers (1)

An interest in maps seems to run in our family; dad was the one who started it all. Over the years I've collected a number of Alabama highway maps, including the "official" ones issued each year by the state government and available in rest stops along the interstates and welcome stations at the state line. In this post I'm exploring some of these maps. Their front and back covers can tell us some interesting things; let's investigate.

Highway maps began to appear in the United States around World War I as private and military traffic increased. Rand McNally issued its first highway map in 1917. Alabama issued a road map as early as 1914. However, many of those roads were probably impassable by motorized vehicles! I've done a blog post on early Alabama road maps here.

By the 1950's states and map and gas companies were issuing what we think of as highway maps. I used to enjoy getting these [they were free then] on trips as we stopped at Texaco and other stations. AAA has a good history of these maps on its web site. 

I'm not sure when Alabama began issuing what we find at today's rest stops as "official" highway maps. The earliest in my collection is 1976. Many of these maps are shown below; I've left comments on some. You can find a second selection of these maps here. The Alabama Department of Transportation issues these maps "for free distribution only."

This map features the U.S. Bicentennial, a series of celebrations in the 1970's to honor the creation of America as an independent nation. The festivities culminated on July 4, 1976, the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. 

For Alabama, and compared to all the subsequent "official" highway map covers, this one is pretty psychedelic. 

Maps in this period seem to feature the Governor and the state highway director. 

I could make a joke here about the relationship of this back cover to the administration of Fob James, but I'll restrain myself.

Here's at least the second map on which the Alabama Coat of Arms has appeared. The shield features symbols of five nations that have been sovereign over some part or all of what is now Alabama: France, Spain, United Kingdom, Confederacy and the United States. 

Now we have a cover that sets the stage for many to follow by featuring an iconic Alabama landmark. 

I suppose since they are responsible for these maps the State Highway Department deserves to have its building on one of them.

The "Alabama Reunion" was a year-long celebration of state history and culture and the 170th anniversary of statehood.

Well, I guess highway map covers can feature highways and bridges, too.

And now for a pretty country road....

Wait--Alabama has beaches? This theme will reappear....

Here the state is promoting the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail which opened in 1992 and some natural beauty. 

These two covers highlight more natural beauty and outdoor activities.

This cover acknowledges the important role of Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee Institute/University in state and national history. It's also a rare cover featuring any kind of history.

Wait--they do stuff indoors in Alabama? Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum is a great institution to highlight--if you haven't been, it's worth a visit.

OK, back to the beach...

One of the state's most-visited sites finally makes a highway map cover.

And finally three state highway maps from Rand McNally. I could not find a date on this one, but it's probably from the 1970's.

No date on map; Amazon listing has 1984

1997

Anne Goldthwaite, Alabama Artist

In February and March 1913 the first large exhibition of modern art in the United States took place at a National Guard armory in New York City. Known formally as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, the show created controversy among American art critics and creative ferment among artists. The European avant garde had landed here. The single most controversial piece in the show was probably Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase, no. 2", which one critic famously described as "an explosion in a shingle factory." 

The works of numerous American and European artists and sculptors filled many galleries in the exhibition. Some fifty women were included in the show; one of them was Alabama native Anne Goldthwaite. 

Goldthwaite was born in Montgomery on June 28, 1869. Her father, Richard Wallach Goldthwaite, had served as an officer in the Confederate army. Her mother was Lucy Boyd Armistead Goldthwaite. The 1870 U.S. Census shows "Annie" living with her family in Montgomery's 4th ward. Her father's occupation was "lawyer". The family soon moved to Dallas, Texas, where she grew up. 

By 1892, with her family's encouragement, Goldthwaite had moved to New York to study art under Walter Shirlaw at the National Academy of Design. She moved again in 1906, this time to Paris to study with Charles Guerin. She remained there for several years, becoming a part of the artists and writers in Gertrude Stein's vast modernist circle. She returned to the U.S. for good around the time of the Armory show. Despite her association with modernism, Goldthwaite remained a figurative painter whose subjects were often scenes from the past of the U.S. South.

Early in the 1920's until her death on January 29, 1944, she worked and accepted commissions in New York. In the late 1930's she served as president of the New York Society of Women Artists. Goldthwaite maintained her ties to the South, however, and returned to Montgomery every summer. One of her commissions was the mural, "The Road to Tuskegee" in 1937 in that city's post office. The building is now the Jessie Clinton Arts Centre.

Two catalogs from New York City exhibitions of her work are available via the Internet Archive, one in 1915 here and in 1921 here. Both have interesting prefaces with comments about her work and details of her life to that date, but the earlier one is longer and more detailed. 

"Here was a modest young woman, the descendant of the old slave-owning cavaliers of Alabama, whose work excited the enthusiasm of conservatives and progressives in Paris and New York", wrote Martin Birnbaum. Her portraits are "vivid impressions of character. They reveal a vision clear and true, a method free from the slightest affectation, a vigor of touch and a vehement handling, rarely associated with a woman's art....When she paints the landscapes of her native state, the same convincing power becomes manifest...treated in a highly original manner....and evoke the very spirit of the South."

The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts acquired some of her work as part of its collecting of southern artists in the 1940's and 1950's. The Museum had an exhibition of her work in 2016; the institution holds over 500 oil paintings, etchings, lithographs and works of sculpture.  Some of her works are also held by the Smithsonian's American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. 

Goldthwaite was included in a recent article by Patricia Frank, "The 19th Century Women Artists You Don't Know But Should." 

Anne Goldthwaite, date unknown

Source: Smithsonian American Museum of Art

"Self-Portrait" ca. 1910

Source: Smithsonian American Museum of Art

"The Church on the Hill" aka "The House on the Hill"

Displayed in the 1913 Armory show in NYC

Source: Wikipedia

re

"Cabin in Alabama" ca. 1920

Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum

“White Mules on a Bridge” by Anne Goldthwaite  via The Metropolitan Museum of Art licensed under CC0 1.0

"Southern Street"

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Grazing"

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Garden Gate near Ascain #7"

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

"The Green Sofa"

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

"A Window at Night"

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Head of a Negress: Rachel"

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Goldthwaite is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery.

Source: Find-A-Grave

Saint Patrick's Days Past in Alabama

March 17 is the traditional death date of Saint Patrick and its celebration acknowledges him and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. The day is a religious one in Catholic, Lutheran and several other churches and is celebrated in many countries where the Irish have settled. The day is also a general celebration of Irish history and culture.

A few tidbits related to Saint Patrick's Day in Alabama and comments are below. And don't miss the video on YouTube of the 2006 leprechaun appearance in Crichton, a suburb of Mobile. Wikipedia has the background.

Tumble In Youth Center in Decatur decorated for a formal dance on St. Patrick's Day in 1945. The Center was sponsored by the Decatur Recreation Commission and St. John's Episcopal Church and had 236 boy and girl members at this time. 

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History 

This profile of Rick Woodward  was published in a Birmingham newspaper on March 31, 1934. Woodward was a third generation Birmingham businessman who also owned the Birmingham Barons baseball team. The caption under Woodward's photo notes that he had stepped out of his office on St. Patrick's Day and saw peach tree blossoms, the first he had noted that season. "For years he's taken note of the date for the first blossoms around Birmingham."


Source: Birmingham Public Library

Pratt City Herald 18 March 1899

The Hibernians are an Irish-Catholic fraternal organization founded in New York City in 1836. The group organized a St. Patrick's Day parade in that city every year until 1993 when an independent committee took over responsibility. Pratt City developed in the 1880's in conjunction with the Pratt Mines, which at that time were the largest in the state. The area was a magnet for immigrants of many nationalities, including the Irish.

Source: Birmingham Public Library 

Birmingham Photo of the Day (55): Rosenberger's & More

This 1939 photograph by W.B. Phillips shows businesses on the south side of Second Avenue North. Visible are the Strand and Capitol theaters, Rosenberger's Birmingham Trunk Company, Vogue Beautry and a Kinney Shoe Store. 

The Strand opened in 1915 and operated until 1962. The building was demolished the next year. Several other photos can be seen on the BhamWiki site. The Capitol opened as the Alcazar during the silent film era, and became the Newmar in December 1948. Rosenberger's has operated several stores in the Birmingham area beginning early in the 20th century. This store opened in the 1920's. 

More information is below some of the images. 

Here are Rosenberger's listings in the 1945 Birmingham Yellow Pages. 

Theatre listing in the 1945 Yellow Pages

The Vogue Beauty Salon appeared in the 1945 Yellow Pages, but I did not find Kinney Shoes. However, Kinney Shoes was a national chain with over 300 stores in 1936 and lasted until 1998. A Kinney Shoes store was one of the original tenants at Birmingham's Eastwood Mall when it opened in August 1960. 

Dad & the USS Errol

When Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941, Dad was fifteen years old. He tried to sign up after his eighteenth birthday, but he had pretty bad acne, and the military would not take him. He did work in the Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, an essential part of the war effort.

After the war he tried again with the US Navy and was accepted in July 1946. Most of the memorabilia we have on his service is stored at mom's; I'll be digging into that one day. We also have dad's rather lengthy written memories of his Navy stint; I hope to transcribe and post that material also. He includes lots of detail and some fascinating stories.

In the meantime, here is just a bit about his Navy years and especially the ship on which he served in the South Pacific, the USS Errol. 

The light cargo ship was originally built for the US Army during the war. The Navy acquired it in April 1947 while the vessel was at Apra, Guam, and commissioned it on July 9. The Errol displaced 550 tons, was 177 feet long and had a crew of 42. The ship was named after Errol Shoal in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. 

Wikipedia's entry has this to say about its duties in the Pacific:

"Errol throughout her naval service carried passengers and cargo among American islands and those of the Trust Territory of the Pacific, calling at Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Truk, the Palau Islands, Ulithi, Chichi Jima, Kwajalein, Pagan Island, Agrihan, and smaller islands in the Caroline Islands. From September to December 1949 she was overhauled at Pearl Harbor, the only interruption to her constant operations in the Pacific."

The Errol was decommissioned in July 1951 and loaned to the Department of the Interior. In January 1952 that transfer was made permanent. The final fate of the Errol is unknown according to the Wikipedia page and NavSource Online. 

Dad was a member of the original crew. You can see the entire listing below. During its career in the Navy, the Errol had several captains. A listing is here. The first captain was Lieutenant Russell Quartus June, who served until September 14, 1948. 

This post, by the way, is my 300th on this blog. Further comments are below some of the photos.

Here's dad's photo of the USS Errol; I've been unable to locate any others online. Mom says dad once told her one of the only times he was really scared during his Navy service was the first time he had to climb to the crow's nest.

Here's the Navy's notice of commission of the vessel and the listing of the first crew. Dad is the next to the last name given.

Source: NavSource Online

On the back of this photograph dad wrote, "AJ Wright Jr and his friend Ackuos on board the USS Errol SW Pacific 1947".

The caption reads "Basic Engineering Class B11-1".  That's dad in the back row, second from the right. I presume this photo is a class at the Naval Station Great Lakes, north of Chicago, where dad did further training after boot camp in Bainbridge, Maryland. 

This photo may have been taken in Chicago while he was on leave.  

Dad is buried in one of the newer sections of Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville. 

A Quick Visit to Montgomery (3)

In August 2012 son Amos and I made a trip to Montgomery to see some historical sites. Along the way, as I've covered in previous blogs, we happened upon a great Alabama ruin, the Clanton Drive-In, and made a trip through Tuskegee on the way back. 

Downtown Montgomery was quiet that day, since the legislature was not in session. The previous two Montgomery posts are here and here. Comments are below some of the photographs. 

Riverfront Park was a pretty place on a hot August day. Close to The Alley and other locations around the capitol, the park has an amphitheater for concerts, the Harriott II riverboat and other facilities. The Montgomery Biscuits minor league baseball team play at Riverwalk Stadium nearby.

Amos and I had lunch at a restaurant at this venue. I don't remember the name, but we enjoyed it! The Alley is a complex of shops, eateries and bars near Riverfront Park. 

Located near the state capitol is the First White House of the Confederacy, and we did spend some time here. This house served as residence of President Jefferson Davis and family while the capital of the Confederate States of America was located in Montgomery. That period only lasted from February to May 1861, when the capital was moved to Richmond, Virginia. During that time, however, Mrs. Davis hosted many parties at the residence. 

This photo shows the house, built in the 1820's, at it's original location several miles away. Efforts to preserve the house began in the late 19th century, and in 1919 the legislature appropriated money to have it moved to the capital complex. 

The house is filled with furniture of the period and personal items of all sorts belonging to the Davis family. 

We encountered a fascinating example of the ironies of history that day. Apparently the only staff member working there when we visited and who greeted us as we entered was an African-American woman. In talking later we realized both of us had been tempted to ask her what it was like working in this temple of the Confederacy.