The Alabama Power Company established a Montevallo District in the early twentieth century and served the multi-county district’s electrical customers from this office at the corner of Main and Shelby Streets until they moved to a new office in the newly constructed Whaley Shopping Center in the 1960's. They also had a supply warehouse and base of operations for their line crews in a low cinder-block building at the intersection of highways 25 and 119. The building is a used car dealership today.
While the Montevallo-based Alabama Power Co. engineers occupied offices in the back of the building, the front felt like a combination bank and appliance store. Customers could come in and pay their “light” bills at a payment window and also shop for the latest refrigerators and ovens being sold by the company.
Electricity first came to Montevallo on Main Street and was supplied by local entrepreneur, J.A. Brown, Sr. Mr. Brown generated power with the steam turbine he brought to town to make power for his ice plant on Shelby Street, just across Shoal Creek. After meeting his own electrical needs, Mr. Brown found a ready market for his surplus power and strung lines from his substation to Main Street. It was not long before Alabama Power purchased Brown’s power distribution system and made improvements that allowed electrification of the entire town. Mr. Brown’s original substation remains in its original location and is still part of the local electrical grid.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Shortly after this Throwback Thursday entry was originally published in October of 2018, a panoramic photo came to light from the mid-1920s of the Men’s Bible Class of the Montevallo Baptist Church. Approximately 150 men and a few women, dressed in their “Sunday Best,” assembled for the photo in front of the business buildings on the north side of Main Street near its intersection with Shelby Street. What you see here is only a section of the full photograph, but if you look closely behind the people in the picture, you can clearly see that the storefront that eventually became the Alabama Power Company’s Montevallo District Office had been a drug store. You can also see from close inspection that the storefront to the right of the drug store was the U.S. Post Office for Montevallo, Alabama at the time.
The ads for R.A. Reid, Druggist (1911), and Latham and Hendrick Druggists (1915), appear to be just two of several different drug stores that occupied this building prior to Alabama Power’s arrival. Both ads proclaim that they are located “next to the post office.”
An additional detail in the group photo shows a sign for Dr. Givhan’s office mounted on the brick wall next to the drug store window. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was not unusual for doctors to rent space for their offices in local drug stores. Edgar Gilmore Givhan, M.D., was one of several physicians who practiced medicine in Montevallo around 1900 and he is listed in the Alabama Girls Industrial School catalogs for 1897 and 1898 as “College Physician”. He married Lena Peterson, daughter of the second president of A.G. I. S., Dr. Francis Marion Peterson, and built up a thriving practice during his 40 years of service to the community.
Thanks to Clayton Nordan, Vice-President of the Montevallo Historical Society, for contributing these images and information!
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