Another Lunch at the Helena Depot

Eating a good meal in the midst of some history is always fun. Recently Dianne and I had lunch at The Depot Deli & Grill in Helena. We've eaten there several times and always enjoyed it, and this lunch was no exception. Since The Depot is an historic location, and Helena has some interesting history, I thought I would post a little bit about both. 

Helena began as a community known as Cove in the mid-1840's and then renamed Hillsboro in 1856 when a rolling mill was built in the area. That mill provided arms for Confederate forces during the Civil War. Railroads pushed into the area during the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the town was renamed again after an engineer's sweetheart. 

The town boomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Steel mills, a cotton gin, and coal mines all contributed to the growth that also included hotels and many stores and residences. Helena survived a devastating fire in 1895, but in 1920 decline began. The coal mines closed and the steel mill moved. The Great Depression hit hard and in 1933 a tornado killed 14 people and destroyed over 100 homes. Helena remained a small community in rural Shelby County until late in the 20th century, when suburban growth south of Birmingham exploded.

Several historical structures remain, and the entire downtown, known as Old Town Helena, is a pleasant place with various shops and restaurants. Read some more below the photos.  

You can find many historical photos of Helena in a book by Ken Penhale and Martin Everse, Helena, Alabama [Images of America Series, Arcadia Press, 1998]. 


UPDATE 19 April 2019

You can read an article about the 20th anniversary of the restaurant here.

The Depot is a modest looking place, but culinary delights can be found within.

There is a definite railroad theme to the place.

As this large sign near the entrance notes, the Depot building has been moved twice. The second move brought it to its current location in 1999, when the eatery opened. This structure was the railroad depot and freight house from 1872 until 1905.

The interior retains the look and feel of a waiting room from another time. Part of the decor includes dollar bills; you can see many of them above the counter.

Hey, kids! Know what this item is? Many great works of literature were pounded out on similar machines. Lots of other stuff, too.

Here we have an old cash register and various trinkets and an old photo.

This caboose greets you from across the street as you enter and leave the Depot. Railroads lost some of their magic when they stopped using these. 

There are some pleasant views from the patio.

This plaque is just outside the Depot and across the street next to the caboose.

Just down the road from the Depot is the Penhale Museum, devoted to history of the area. The Museum, which celebrated its fifth anniversary last year, is open most Saturdays, but call ahead to make sure. 

Alabama Typewriter Company

I recently passed by this building just off the UAB campus near the Fish Market Restaurant on 6th Avenue South. The place appears empty and forlorn; I think the venerable Alabama Typewriter Company has finally closed.

Let's investigate....

Here's the store front as it looked on March 3. Compare that to this Google Street View from February 2017. The website advertised on the business next door, Internationalnotary.com is no longer active, either. According to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, that site has been inactive since 2006. 

Billy Ray Hagood in his shop ca. 2017

Source: Jonathan Krohn for the Trussville Tribune via BhamWiki

According to an April 2011 profile, Mr. Hagood bought the shop at this location in 1986. That profile on al.com noted, "Founded as a Victor Adding Machine Co. branch in 1922, the typewriter repair shop took on its current name in the 1930s or '40s, though Hagood doesn't know exactly when."

The BhamWiki entry expands on that history: "The business was founded as a local office of the Victor Adding Machine Company in 1922 and became independent in the 1930s or 1940s. In the 1950s and 1960s it was owned by W. R. Hudson and located at 1821 5th Avenue North."

On September 1, 2017, a truck crashed into the front of the business. Hagood was not injured, but spent two hours trapped inside until debris was cleared for him to leave. In a WVTM-TV report, Hagood said the event might be the "end of an era." You can read more about the incident and see some dramatic photos here. 

Perhaps the business never reopened. There is a Facebook page, but the most recent entry is December 19, 2013. The phone number there and other places on the web is out of service; dial 205-322-8691 and you get that disembodied voice telling you "The number has been disconnected or is no longer in service".

The following two entries and the ad are taken from the 1945 Birmingham Yellow Pages telephone directory. As you can see, the information for the Victor Adding Machine Company and the Alabama Typewriter Company are the same. I included the ad just for fun. 

Additional material follows the ad. Feel free to leave your memories of this business or typewriters in the comments. 

This extract from the 1945 Birmingham Yellow Pages shows the Alabama Typewriter Company with the same address as the Victor Adding Machine Company shown below and with an additional phone number. You can see that address on Google Maps.

This extract from the 1945 Birmingham Yellow Pages shows the Victor Adding Machine Company at 1923 5th Avenue North.

This advertisement appears in the 1945 Birmingham Yellow Pages in the "Typewriters" section.

This particular typewriter has been on display in recent years at the Helena Depot Deli & Grill. The Bessemer Hall of History has a typewriter used by Adolf Hitler. Typewriters can still be found at flea markets and antique and consignment shops. You can read a history of typewriters here.

One of the world's best known collectors of typewriters is actor Tom Hanks. The short stories in his 2017 book were inspired by his collection.

You can read a profile of Stanley Adelman, "New York's patron saint of typewriters" here.

And then there is the Boston Typewriter Orchestra...

Finally, here I am in my office in Draughon Library at Auburn University in the 1970's, pounding away on an IBM Selectric.   

Pelham Reaches Fifty

       Most of us probably associate Pelham only with recent history. After all, Pelham was not incorporated until 1964, when the population was 654.Most of the town's growth has taken place since the 1980s. In July the city celebrated the 50th anniversary of that incorporation. Yet a community named Pelham has existed in this location since the early 1870s; a post office was established here in 1873.

Pelham's history actually goes back to the very early days of the state. Alabama achieved statehood in December, 1819. Shelby County was created in the Alabama Territory in February, 1818; the county is named for Isaac Shelby, the first governor of Kentucky and a hero of the Battle of King's Mountain during the Revolutionary War.

In 1820 a county courthouse was built by Thomas A. Rogers, Alabama's first Secretary of State, in a community known as Shelbyville. Six years later a permanent county seat was established in the southern part of the county at Columbiana. Shelbyville remained tiny, and after the Civil War--some accounts say in 1867--the town was renamed after Confederate hero Major John Pelham.

John Pelham in his uniform at West Point, 1858
Source: Wikipedia

John Pelham was born in what is now Calhoun County on September 7, 1838. He was the son of Atkinson Pelham, a physician, and Martha McGehee Pelham. His siblings included brothers William and Peter. A fictionalized account of the family, Growing Up in Alabama, was published by Mary Elizabeth Sergent in 1988.

As the Civil War loomed, Pelham resigned from West Point just weeks before his graduation. He distinguished himself with an artillery battery at the first Battle of Manassas, and J.E.B. Stuart appointed him captain of a six-gun battery with his cavalry. Pelham participated in some 60 battles under Stuart, and his contribution to the Confederate victory at Fredericksburg led Robert E. Lee to dub him "the Gallant Pelham." He died at the age of 24 on March 17, 1863, at the Battle of Kelly's Ford in Virginia. Pelham is buried in the Jacksonville City Cemetery, where a large monument marks his grave. The city of Pelham held a Major John Pelham Day in March 1988.

Our Shelby County Pelham is not the only location with that name in Alabama; there is a Pelham Heights in Calhoun County and another Pelham in Choctaw County. Communities named Pelham exist in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, New Hampshire, New York and Massachusetts. There are also numerous streets by this name around the country. Some of these are probably not named after a Confederate cavalry hero!

Very little history of our Pelham has been gathered for the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At least five physicians practiced here during this period. Eli Forest Denson, a Vanderbilt graduate, arrived around 1879. Another Vanderbilt alumni, Joseph Madison Johnson, and William R. King Johnson [perhaps a brother] who graduated from the Atlanta Medical College, set up practices in the early 1880s. Andrew Wailes Horton of the Medical College of Alabama began practice in Pelham around 1901. How long these doctors remained in the area is not yet known. Buried in the Pelham Community Cemetery, which was established in the early 1840s, is John Payne, M.D., who died in 1901. The cemetery is located at the intersection of County Highway 105 (Bearden Road) and Industrial Park Road; the oldest marked grave is that of Louisa T. Betty Cross.

The Alabama State Gazetteer and Business Directory 1887-1888 lists a number of the businesses and professional men in Pelham, which had about 250 residents then. Included were a postmaster, constable, hotel owner, dentist, shoemaker, blacksmith, four general store owners, a lumber yard, three ministers, and one physician, William Rufus K. Johnson.

At least one of the merchants, W.S. Cross, was profiled in depth in the Memorial Record of Alabama published in 1893. A Shelby County native, Cross started a small store in Pelham in 1881. He did well enough to buy and sell at a profit some Birmingham real estate and then bought more property in Pelham, "which he has improved with dwellings and store houses." In 1880 Cross had married Ann McWhorter, a Butler County native; by 1893, the couple had five children.

Pelham appears on Joseph Squire's "Map of Helena and Environs" from 1885 and on a 1937 Shelby County map issued by the state highway department. What is probably the city's oldest building, the Pelham Railroad Depot, dates from about 1900. The

structure was moved from its original location behind City Hall to the city park in August 1988 and renovated.

From the 1930s until at least the 1950s Shelby County Voting District 17 was known as the Pelham District. Development of Oak Mountain State Park began in 1935 under the direction of engineer W.J. Connell using the labor of 180 young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Many of these youths were from New York City and getting their first taste of rural America.

Several schools have been located in Pelham. Rutherford High School opened in the 1870s. This structure, which had one large room and a smaller music room, was destroyed by a storm in 1909. The Pelham School, a two-story wooden building, opened sometime after and was replaced in 1936 by a one-story school with four rooms, an auditorium, and a lunch room. Located on the site of the current City Hall, the building was used as the city's offices after Valley Elementary opened in 1964 until it was torn down in 1973. Pelham High School opened in 1974.

Efforts to organize churches in Pelham began before 1900. A Methodist church, located for over a century at the southwest corner of U.S. Highway 31 and Shelby Co. 52, was dedicated in November, 1898, and also served Baptists and Presbyterians. A Baptist church formed in 1908, but became inactive the following year. Several other attempts to organize a Baptist church continued into the 1930s; the first full-time pastor, Ronnie Euler, was appointed in 1966.

On July 7, 1964, an incorporation election was held at the Pelham School. Many residents were afraid the nearby city of Alabaster would try to annex the area. Over ninety percent of eligible voters, one hundred and forty-one people, voted; one hundred and twenty-one were in favor of incorporation. Three days later the "Order of Incorporation" was filed at the Probate Office, and Pelham's legal existence began. The incorporated area included the Pelham and Keystone communities, Fungo Hollow, and part of the Helena rural route. In the fifty years since that vote, Pelham has had only five mayors: Paul Yeager, Sr. [1964-1976], Alton Burk Dunaway [1976-1984], Bobby Hayes 1984-2008], Don Murphy [2008-2012], and the current mayor and former city Fire Chief, Gary Waters.

In December, 1964, Pelham hired its first policeman, L.A. "Buddy" Wilkinson, who was paid $100 a month. Initially the fire department was a volunteer one; the first Chief was Roy Jowers, followed by O.C. Ray, who served from 1966 to 1977. In March of that year W.A. Bryars became the city's first professional Chief. The first city clerk, Willie Mae Dennis, held the post until her retirement in 1984; during her first few years she worked part-time for the city. The U.S. Census Bureau population estimate for the city on July 1, 2012, was 22,012 individuals.

Read More About It 

Hassler, William W. Colonel John Pelham. 1960 

Heritage of Shelby County, Alabama. 1999 

Mercer, Philip. The Life of the Gallant Pelham. 1995 

Milham, Charles G. Gallant Pelham: American Extraordinary. 1985 [1959] 

Roberts, Barbara. "History of Pelham" [unpublished; available in the Pelham Public Library] 

Schatz, Clark T. "The Birth and Growth of a Town" [unpublished; covers 1964-1979; available in the Pelham Public Library] 

Seales, Bobby Joe. History of Pelham: The Gateway of Opportunity.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~alshelby/Pelham.html

Links to Pelham Articles on this blog

Pondering an Alabama Map (2): Pelham in 1926

Pondering an Alabama Map (1): Pelham in 1917

Keystone Then and Now

Pelham Schools Have a Long History

Pelham Railroad Depot Then and Now

Pelham's Oak Mountain State Park 

A Story in Stone: John Payne, M.D. [1860-1901]

Pelham in the 1880s

A version of this article appeared in the Pelham City News July 2014.