A Visit to Aldridge Gardens in Hoover

Recently Dianne & I visited Aldridge Gardens in Hoover, one of those places we've been meaning to visit for a long time. We spent a very pleasant hour wandering the trail around the park's lake and seeing the sights. 

The facility's web site offers some information about the Gardens' history and amenities: 

"Since Aldridge Gardens opened in 2002, the 30-acre former property of well-known horticulturist Eddie Aldridge and his wife Kay has become a popular attraction in the greater Birmingham area. The young garden showcases hydrangeas, including the Snowflake Hydrangea, which was patented by Mr. Aldridge and is now the official flower of the City of Hoover.

Other features include an event venue and gallery in the couple's former home, an outdoor pavilion, a six-acre lake and a half-mile walking trail. The Gardens also host plant sales, art exhibits and shows, classes and seminars, bird walks, fishing days, concerts and more."

Admission to the Gardens is free. The trail is an easy walk and there are plenty of benches along the way. Also to be seen are several whimsical sculptures by Frank Fleming, which for some odd reason I did not photograph. Maybe next time. 

Dianne mentioned that ironically the backdrop to all this natural beauty was the sound of traffic on the nearby Interstate highway.

Photos and a few comments below. 

The Gardens have lots of natural beauty that will only increase in coming weeks.

Here's an interesting sculpture you come across on the back side of the lake. Orr Park in Montevallo has more than 30 of these chain saw sculptures created by Tim Tingle since 1993. He only carves in dead or dying trees, and I suppose something similar was done to this cypress. I don't know if it's by Tim Tingle, though. 

The park has a significant display honoring veterans.

Several mallard ducks entertained us while we were there. We'll have to bring food next time.

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