Following more than 50 successful years in the furniture business, with stores in four different cities in Central Alabama, R.E. Whaley and his son James acquired the entire city block that you see in this diagram in order to update and modernize the retailing landscape of their hometown. Their dream was known as the Whaley Shopping Center and by 1964 it had become a reality.
They were in no hurry to complete their ambitious plan so they took a conservative approach, deciding to get their feet wet with just two buildings to start. The spaces intended for Alabama Power and the Food Center supermarket were built first. To make way for the new building, one of the Main Street district’s handsome two story wood frame houses that had sat for years on the corner of Middle and Island Streets had to be razed. The building was completed in 1961 and Alabama Power moved in that same year, along with Montevallo’s first “Modern, Self-service Food Store,” the Food Center, operated by a Mr. Moss who moved his family to town when he opened the new store.
Part of the Whaley’s plan was to provide a new home for Times Printing Co. in the basement of the building directly under the Food Center. The Montevallo Times’ and its commercial printing business had been located in the basement and on the street level floor of the Masonic Temple building on Main Street since the mid-1930’s. The newspaper was sold in 1959 and folded into the Shelby County Reporter (based in Columbiana). W.M Wyatt and his son, Pat, wanted to expand and modernize their printing business, so they moved into a greatly expanded space in the new Whaley building shortly after their upstairs neighbor, the Food Center opened for business.
in 1963, James Whaley bought the iconic Reynolds/Rogan house on the corner of Main and Middle streets and had it torn down so as to make way for the completion of the shopping center. He also took ownership of the old Derby Hotel building and had it torn down as well. The gas station in the same block on Main met the same fate, as did the old two-story Albright building.
That same year, the remaining store buildings planned for the development were finished and their new occupants gradually moved in and opened for business. Once the new stores were occupied and Montevallo began to adjust to the new retail wonderland in the center of town, the Whaleys held a big Grand Opening celebration event in April of 1964. It was a big success and the citizens of Montevallo and its environs, as well as the students of Alabama College, readily took to the new amenities now in their midst.
Today, in 2019, there is nothing remaining of the original Whaley Shopping Center. The city block that it once occupied remains as a retail hub of six stores in the center of town, anchored by a CVS pharmacy, but the building that houses them is of relatively recent vintage. Unlike its 100+ year mercantile neighbors just a block or so away on Main Street, the Whaley Shopping Center was not able to endure the test of time.
Thank you Clay Nordan, Vice President of Montevallo Historical Society, for this information!
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