The two story Albright building that stood for many years on the southwest corner of the intersection of Main and Vine streets was configured with two ground level store spaces on either side of a staircase that led up from the street to apartments on the second floor. The earliest occupants of the store spaces that we can be sure of did business there in the early 1940’s, but the building had been on Main Street for many years before that. Around 1941, as you faced the building from the street, Whaley Furniture Co. occupied the space to the left of the staircase and Gregg’s Firestone Auto Supply Store occupied the space to the right.
Mrs. Comer Albright, a widow, owned the building and lived in the apartments on the second floor with her sister. There was a deep gallery they accessed from inside that overlooked Main Street and they enjoyed sitting under its shady cover in hot weather or on pleasant afternoons in other seasons. The gallery had a classic porch swing and the Albright sisters maintained a veritable jungle of potted plants and hanging fern baskets that cascaded over the porch railings.
It is not known when Gregg’s Firestone moved out or went out of business. World War II may have contributed to its demise, but by 1945, Livingston Repair Shop had become the occupant of the right side store space. That same year, Montevallo Electric Company came in to share space with Livingston. In 1946, Herman Stone, a former coal miner from nearby Boothton, set up a jewelry store and repair shop in the small annex between the Albright building and the building that soon became the home of Fancher Radio Repair. In 1948, Mr. Stone moved his store a block to the west into a vacant space next door to the Little Shop For Personal Service. Hall Taxi service followed Stone into the Albright annex and operated out of that space for an unknown period of time.
By 1950, the repair shops doing business in the right hand store space of the Albright building had either gone out of business or gone elsewhere. In February of that year, Clayton O. Nordan re-opened his hardware business in that vacant space following a fire that forced him out of the Mitchell Building, a block away near the St. George Hotel. Nordan operated in this location for approximately three years until he made another move and set up shop in one side of the old Wilson’s Drug Co. building where Czeskleba TV repair is today. Nordan decided to change careers and sold his business in 1954.
Thank you Clay Nordan, Vice President of Montevallo Historical Society, for this information!