COLUMN: REMEMBER WHEN: Andalusia homes of the past
Published 1:00 pm Friday, June 6, 2025
The original homeowner was Anna Chapman Riley. It is the present site of Darby’s Central Office. (PHOTO PROVIDED)
The original homeowner was Zack Dan Studstill. It is the present site of Sonic. (PHOTO PROVIDED)
The original homeowner was Henry J. Law. It is the present site of the U.S. Post Office. (PHOTO PROVIDED)
The original homeowner was Cyrus O’Neal. It is the present site of the First Baptist Church. (PHOTO PROVIDED)
The original homeowner was Sumpter Milligan. It is the present site of Bass Mini-Storage on South 3 Notch. (PHOTO PROVIDED)
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As I ride down the three original main streets of Andalusia, East Three Notch Street, South Three Notch Street, and River Falls Street, homes of the past that were located along those busy city thoroughfares come to mind. The late Dr. Bill Hansford said it best in his 2015 book, Andalusia, Alabama, when he titled one of the chapters, “Andalusia’s Lost Architectural Treasures.”
When the Three Notch Museum was established in the mid 1980s, some of the earliest donated artifacts included old Andalusia pictures including not only downtown storefronts, business blocks, churches, and schools but also family main street homes. So that is to say that there are on display today a treasure of pictures collected through the years that have been accumulated thanks to citizens who robbed the family scrapbooks. In some cases, post cards were made that have survived.
The younger generation today for the most part does not know too much about the residences that once lined the main streets. Only a few historic homes remain. Business and commercial establishments took their place little by little. A portion of the character of the early town has evaporated. The same holds true for most small towns.
One can hardly imagine the lovely homes that stood on our city streets. Those who lived in the local homes were among the builders of the town – saloon keepers, grocers, hardware moguls, haberdashers, auto dealers, attorneys, physicians, bankers, public officials, store keepers, lumbermen, druggists, manufacturers, livery stable owners, coal and ice business owners, cola distributors, dry goods merchants, movie house entrepreneurs, educators, and undertakers to name a few.
In 1899 when the train track was completed extending the railroad line into Andalusia from Searight, the trains started bringing in shipments of building materials that enabled people to start building fine homes. That is not to say that there were already smaller homes in the sidewalk neighborhoods, but elaborate homes with fancy craftsmanship on larger lots appeared on the scene as business progressed and success took shape.
There surely must have been master craftsmen who constructed these impressive houses with exquisite design and detail including such styles as Colonial Revival, Victorian, Queen Anne, Eastlake, Edwardian, English Arts and Crafts, and Neoclassical Revival.
Homes such as these in our small town replicated ones seen in larger towns such as our capitol city, Montgomery. Architects must have been employed to create house plans for these showplaces. There was surely pride of home ownership back then just like today. Could there have been competition among area residents to build the prettiest, the most unique abode?
When the village of Montezuma on the Conecuh River was abandoned and the citizens moved up the hill to higher ground around 1844, we can only imagine that the first thing heads of households had to do after their businesses got established was to build homes for their families. I am reminded of Edgar A. Guest’s poem, “Home” which reads, “It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make a home.” That was just as important back then as it is today.
Before the train arrived in 1899, there were surely limited building supplies that had been available for the past 55 years. So we can assume that the early homes were simply built with local material. Historical accounts mention a number of saw mills located on streets in town such as Barton and Stewart Streets.
What we call “Bed and Breakfast” today was mostly referred to back then as the “Boarding House” arrangement. When widows were left to reside in and maintain their large home, they often offered rooms and board in a respectable way, of course, to those in need.
In the mid 1920s, Dr. Wilbur Sawyer with the World Health Organization came to town for several months to study and survey the spread of malaria and hookworms in the rural areas. He boarded on East Three Notch with the widow Rankin. Sawyer wrote letters back home to his wife in New York about living in the Rankin home with a “bevy of school marms.” The words in his letters of 100 years ago still ring clear – “You can build a marble courthouse, but you can’t keep off the spit!”
My first grade teacher and another teacher lived next door to my parents in the East Three Notch Street stately home of a widow. It was security and companionship for both. That was in the early 1950s. So that trend, now as popular as ever, continues today as exemplified by my friends in their “Air BNB” in the historic Waits-Barnes home on Three Notch and Fifth Avenue.
To preserve history is the goal of the historical society. The pictures inserted here in this column are intended to do just that. May you like myself ride down the main streets and as you pass, try to picture one of these houses that stood on a particular lot and Remember When.
Sue Bass Wilson, AHS Class of 1965, is a local real estate broker and long-time member of the Covington Historical Society. She can be reached at suebwilson47@gmail.com.
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