Our
Memories of Huntsville
This is a collection of classmate memories in 2005, the Bicentennial Year of
Huntsville, Alabama
Click
here to read a fascinating piece of Huntsville History about the
following exhibition.
Currently
on view at the Huntsville Museum of Art
"From
Red Clay to Rockets, A Bicentennial Look at Huntsville Artistic
Legacy"
Includes art related to the History of Huntsville
and
Five
pieces loaned from the collection of
Margaret Anne Goldsmith
Portrait of Man With Hat
by Maria Howard Weeden, circa 1800
water color and graphite
Portrait
of Woman with Scarf
by Maria Howard Weeden, circa 1800
water color and graphite
Biscuit
Lady
by Maria Howard Weeden, circa 1800
water color and graphite
Portrait
of Man
by Maria Howard Weeden, circa 1800
water color and graphite
Canna
Lillies
by
Maurice Grosser, circa 1920
oil on canvas
Please read on...
[I
obtained this additional and interesting piece of Huntsville history
from Margaret Ann related
to the announcement above.]
August 2005
From Margaret Anne Goldsmith:
You might want to
add that my great great grand parents Morris and Henrietta
Bernstein lived across the street from Howard Weeden and purchased
the paintings for their daughter who passed them on to my
grandparents -- Annie and Lawrence Goldsmith ---
-- I inherited the
paintings from them.
Maurice
Grosser was my father's first cousin -- and a great grandson of
the Bernsteins. His painting at the museum was done during college
vacations in Huntsville. The vases in the painting belonged
to Maurice's grandmother (my great grandmother) Betty
Bernstein Goldsmith -- the flowers were from her garden.
Maurice was born around
1905 on Gates Street just one block west of Howard Weeden's
house. He grew up in Huntsville and went to Harvard where
he received a scholarship to the Sorbonne -- Maurice lived
in NYC all his life where he painted, wrote several books
and became a member of Gertrude Stein's circle -- . The
Huntsville Museum of art has a number of Maurice's works in
their permanent collection which are exhibited from time to
time.
###
Dudley
Campbell
6/2005
Please
send this photo to the HHS page if you like. I'm sure others in our
class can spot things that will trigger memories. That is Spring
Street that runs past the canal. It and so much of that area was
covered up with the building of the VBCC. This photo I took in
'68 shows Huntsville before I-565 sliced through it. You can see
the start of construction of the Big Spring "improvements"
after Cotton Row was demolished.
Click here to see the pictures.
###
Barry
Johnston
6/5/2005
This
is one of my earliest memories.
When I was four, the first year my family lived in Huntsville,
we lived downtown in a large late-nineteenth century house, only two
blocks from a central park called Big Spring.
My
Mom
took us to the Spring regularly. From the waters edge, I would watch
with great interest the large gold and orange carp meandering lazily
through the mysterious ferns. One trip, I fell in and thrashed about
with the creepy tentacles of the ferns rapping about my legs and I
thought they were trying to pull me under. I remember calling for help
and seeing my Mom deeply engrossed in a conversation with a friend on
a nearby bench. Although it was only seconds, it seemed forever before
she came to the rescue.
###
Hattie Marie
6/3/2005
I
have a couple of memories of the "young" Huntsville:
One of my uncles was a bus
driver. When we knew he was driving the North
East Route,
Eberhard Ball, Brady Ratliff, my brother Jimmy, and I would WALK
from our house at the top of Lee High Drive to Oakwood Avenue.
Uncle J. always let us ride for free and let us off as close to
the swimming pool as he could get us. We would stay at
the pool as long as possible and return home looking like
bright red prunes.
You know? the water in that pool
never did get much warmer than 33 degrees F. I think they
must have pumped water from Home Ice and Coal Company to
keep it filled!!!!
The other memory was that
although the entrance to Woody's Drive In Theatre was on
Meridian Street, the "Pool Gang", plus numerous others
whose religion did not permit them to partake of mixed pool
activities, would walk to the end of Lee High Drive, cross the
railroad tracks, go through a hole in the fence, sit on the
cold, hard, gravel ground - on the FIRST ROW - and watch movies
that our parents approved of.
The Woodys knew that not many of
our families could afford the admission price as often as we all
liked, so as long as we were orderly, there was NEVER any
attempt to eject us from the grounds.
What happy memories!!!
###
Jane
Mathis-Hopson
[6/2/2005]
Not only the city
swimming pool, but the tennis courts just west of the pool
-- Jo Anna and I used to play there (she was much better than I
was!). The locker rooms at the pool were always damp;
the metal locker baskets had a safety pin with a
number on it that you'd hide somewhere on your
swimsuit while you were at the pool. Once my basket fell off the
top of one of the concrete-block cubicles in which we'd change clothes,
hitting me on the face, and I still have a scar at just to the left
of my nose from that basket!
The Carnegie
Library (my almost-daily summertime walk was from home on Locust
Street to the pool, then to the library on the way back home). Miss
Frances Jones in the downstairs part (there was an entrance on the
side street to the "children's library"), and
Miss Bessie Russell in the regular/adult library
upstairs. One of my most powerful memories is still
of the day Miss Frances said to me, "Jane, you're ready to read
upstairs." I think I was 8, maybe 9 years old. She
took me up the narrow winding stairs inside the
building and introduced me to Miss Russell, who
said I could read and check out anything I wanted to in what
I called the "upstairs library". It was a life-defining
moment and to this day I love libraries.
Another fond
childhood memory is of the city playgrounds, especially the ones
on McCulloch Avenue and the one on California Street at about Fraser
Avenue. In the summer, maybe third through fifth or sixth grades,
we'd spend all morning there. They had programs to teach you crafts
-- I especially remember making gymp lanyards and bracelets -- and
games and sports and stories.
Going to the
playground in the morning and to the pool and library in the
afternoon, being able to walk or ride our bikes to all those places
and feeling safe no matter what. We were so fortunate!
Jane
Jane
Mathis-Hopson
Coordinator of Institutional Research University
of Alabama at Birmingham
###
Betty Vaughn
6/1/2005
This is Betty Vaughn with a lot of pleasant
memories of the Big Spring and downtown Huntsville. Going way
back I remember when the farmers market was somewhere close to the
park. Can not remember the exact location. Also remember
the swimming pool and the picnic area on the hill.
Also in the summer time living in Mayfair I would ride the bus
downtown and go to the Lyric Theatre and see the movie showing there
and then to the Grand Theatre and see that movie and then ride
the bus back home. All of this cost less than $.50. Oh yeah, I
also managed to have a bag of popcorn!
Also remember playing hiding seek and kick the
can on warm summer nights in Mayfair with all the neighborhood kids.
Spending the night outside with my parents because the house was
so hot. Funny, the older I get the more vivid these memories
become although I can't remember what I did last week.