Southeast US Day #2: Montgomery, Alabama and on to Atlanta, Georgia- July 22, 2019

Today, we start sightseeing! My husband K got up at 6:49 CDT to shower and I got up at 7:28. Twenty minutes later, we were off to breakfast. Even for a Hampton Inn, this one had a great variety of food. K was kind enough to make me a chocolate waffle, when we discovered they had chocolate batter.We thoroughly enjoyed our food.

 Back upstairs, we washed up and packed. K had asked for a late checkout, so we didn't have to deal with that yet. Instead, at 8:47, we left to walk to the Alabama State Capitol. The walk gave us a chance to see our hotel in daylight and to note the architectural features of nearby buildings.

When we reached the street leading to the capitol, we detoured slightly to go look at the fountain that was in the circle intersection. The fountain, known as the Court Square Fountain, was placed over an artesian well in 1885. In the 1980's, the statues on it were replaced with aluminum ones, due to corrosion. This is the place where Alabama Town and New Philadelphia grew together to become Montgomery. It is also the area that was central to the local slave trade. At the top is Hebe, the Greek goddess of eternal youth. The next level is "Seated Boys" holding towels and not looking too happy about it. Below that are four Narcissus figures and, finally, "Stem Bitterns", three free-standing birds.
It made for a great photo alone or with the capitol in the distance or with the "Inside Out: The People's Art Project" installation of photos of Montgomerians behind it.

We then headed up Dexter toward Goat Hill, which is a seriously great name for a place where a legislature meets. If it hadn't had been all torn up and being worked on as we went by, we might have noticed the Rosa Parks Bus Stop as we passed it. Instead, we noticed a great old clock nearby and some cool architecture as we headed up the not busy street.

The moment I saw it, I knew this had to be the Alabama Supreme Court building and I was right. It just looks like a supreme court building.

We passed this historical marker, as well as two matching government buildings that were reflections of each other. The legislature meets in one of them now and it is called the State House. I collect capitols. I'll go in a state house, if there is no capitol, but, if there's a capitol, I choose it.

The capitol looks good sitting on top of the hill. I'm not thrilled about some of the history that has taken place here, and they do put it front and center, which can be disconcerting. There's the first statue we saw, which was Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, which was organized here in this building and elected him. The next seems fairly innocuous. It is of John Allan Wyeth, and was done by Borglum, who did Mount Rushmore. Wyeth fought for the Confederacy and became a surgeon after the war. His first wife was the daughter of Dr. J. Marion Sims, whose statue must be on the other side of the building, as we didn't see it.(Sims is known as the "father of modern gynecology", but that knowledge was gained by operating without anesthesia on enslaved black women. He claimed they were willing and had no better option. Somehow, that does not set my mind at ease about him being there.) Wyeth had some rather racist things to say about Mexico in 1915, so not so innocuous after all.

 

We walked to Washington Avenue to head toward the south portico, because that seemed to be the way to go in. We encountered the semicircular Avenue of Flags, which is comprised of the flags of the US states and a stone from each state with the state's name on it. Some were pretty cool. I'll admit that Maryland isn't cool, but it's our home state.

 
When we reached the portico itself, we discovered this star on the floor. Just reminded myself that it is history, even though it seemed to be there out of pride.

It was 9:17, when we entered the building and there weren't a lot of tourists around. We had to walk all the way through a wing of the building to reach the original Entrance Hall, where we were given a map and the lady drew a line on it to show us how to get back to the elevators to go to the second floor. Oddly, the original Governor's Suite (1851-1912), the original Secretary of State's Suite, and the 1912 Governor's Suite were marked on the map as just beyond this hall, but none of them were accessible. There is no reason given, but there are descriptions.
We walked through the old Supreme Court Chamber and Supreme Court Library, which still have the many fireplaces that it took to keep them warm. they are now exhibit spaces. We also saw the state seal, which is rather unusual for basically being a map of where Alabama is. I don't think I've ever seen a state seal that had the names of other states on it before.

The rotunda is not on this floor. You have to go all the way through the building to the back to take the elevator up to the third floor to see it. When you get up there, you walk down a long hall of off-limit offices. The view up to the dome is quite beautiful. The plasterwork and stained glass skylight date from 1906. The pictures by Roderick Mackenzie of Mobile around the base of the dome show the history of Alabama and date from 1927-1920, as does the color scheme. Some of the descriptions could be worded a little better, but I'll give them.

 France establishing first white colony in Alabama under Iberville and Bienville, Mobile, 1702-1711

 Surrender of William Weatherford, hostile Creek leader, to General Andrew Jackson-1814

Pioneer home-seekers led into the Alabama wilderness by Sam Dale-1815

Gov. Wm. W. Bibb and committee drafting the first state constitution at Huntsville-1819

Hostile meeting of De Soto, Spanish explorer and Tuscaloosa, Indian Chieftain-1540

Prosperity follows development of resources-agriculture, commerce and industry-1874-1930

Secession and the Confederacy, inauguration of President Jefferson Davis-1861

Wealth and leisure produce the "Golden Period"- Antebellum life in Alabama 1840-1860

That last one in particular just slays me...
Next up were the galleries for the Senate Chamber and the House. We started with the Senate side. Originally, the gallery here had hard wooden benches. These were replaced with early-1900s theater-style seats.The ceiling here is particularly nice, but that's in a picture from downstairs. Do be sure to note the spittoon by the Speaker's seat.

 

We went to the other side of the rotunda to see the House. I was particularly taken with the trompe l'oeil wall treatments. You have to get up close to them to know that they are not recessed wood. No explanation was given for this side having chairs, but no desks.

 

We went downstairs to the second floor, where we could walk into both chambers. Again, we went into the Senate first. This carpet would be pretty distracting, if you ask me. As promised, here's the lovely ceiling.

We also could appreciate the symmetry of the two curving staircases that led from the first to third floors. And, we got a handy sign of information on the Rotunda.

Over on the House side, note the practicality of putting the stove in a box of sand.

A very intense carpet led us down to the Old Treasurer's Office and its serious vault. The walls on that thing are incredibly thick.

We then made our way down to the Goat Hill Museum Store, which is on the street level on the back of the building. It's really a rather sizeable shop. They had all kinds of Alabama products and I took some time to roam and pick things out. While I did, I got a call from our younger daughter back in Florida. She'd called her father, but he didn't feel it vibrate. She works for Disney and he does for about 12 nights total in December, when he plays for the Candlelight Processional. That makes him a seasonal employee, but still eligible for why she was calling- Disney had opened up dates for the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge cast preview. She ran down the three options, although the one that included the Cantina was no longer available. He gave her his password so that she could go in and secure a date for us. Success! We have a morning slot in August. Woohoo!!
K felt that we had plenty of time, when we left the capitol at 10:10 to walk a couple of blocks and visit the Civil Rights Memorial Center over on Washington Avenue. On the way, we passed this cute little house that seemed too cute to belong with the sign in front.

In just a few minutes, we reached the Memorial. We couldn't really get a lot out of it at that point, because we didn't realize that words were etched into the stone fountain. So, we went around to go into the building itself.

When we went in at 10:15, I was rather embarrassed to answer no, when the lady asked if we were members of the Southern Poverty Law Center, because I certainly get letters from them. The cost was only $2 a piece, which is incredibly little.
I really had not realized what this place was all about. It is dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives in the fight for civil rights, with particular care given to make known the lives of those who were lynched. There was a film and then sign after sign about these folks. There were also more recent victims recognized- LGBTQ, Muslim, etc. These are just a few of them.

It's amazing how a place can be so depressing and yet so uplifting at the same time. It reminds you that there are still people who care. K and I each put our names on the Wall of Tolerance pledging to work for justice, equality and human rights.
Back outside at 11:10, we got a closer look at Maya Lin's fountain and the names and events carved into it. They are not as easy to read these days due to the action of the water over them. I was able to find Brown vs. Board of Ed.

We continued onward to go back to Dexter Ave. to a restaurant we'd passed on our way to the capitol. We had the chance to notice more of the mixtures of architecture in this city.

The sign outside Chris' Hot Dogs proclaimed how historic it was. That seemed like a good reason to have an early (11:30) lunch here. It was a bit awkward going in, because you go down a short hallway toward the kitchen and then, to the right, is an empty dining room. Not knowing what else to do, we went into that. After a few minutes, a kind Southern lady said that there was a dining room in back where they will serve you. We thanked her and went around the wall to this dining room composed mostly of booths. We found one and had a seat.

The waitress brought us menus, which were not complicated. I ordered Chris' Famous Hot Dog with mustard, onion, sauerkraut and chili for $2.65. Oh, and a Coke Zero for $1.85 and fries for $2.25. In spite of being in a hot dog place, K ordered a chicken salad sandwich with chips and a pickle for $5.50, along with a Coke Zero. The hot dog was good, but I would have preferred that it had been grilled a bit more. The fries were okay. K liked his sandwich. For dessert, I ordered a tasty lemon meringue pie for $3 and K ordered a pecan pie for the same price that turned out to be hot and thin on pecans.

We headed back to the hotel at 12:15 and it was a hot 91 degrees. We saw this really cool building, where they'd saved the facade and built new apartments behind it. We'd seen the same thing in Oostende, Belgium last summer. What a great way to preserve a little history!

We reached the hotel at 12:23. We grabbed a trolley on our way upstairs and loaded all of our stuff on it. K checked us out and got the car. It was a little tricky getting a spot to load up the car, but we did it. We left at 12:55 with the odometer reading 56,057 and drove down to look a little at the riverfront, passing the Hank Williams statue as we did so.
We headed east and then northeast on I-85. I tried to do needlework, but I did doze off at times. I totally missed crossing into Georgia, which is where the time zone changed from Central Daylight Savings Time to Eastern and we lost an hour.
At 4:14 EDT, K pulled off at exit 81 (56191) to go to the Shell station there that had diesel. The thing of it was there was no diesel to be found. Finally, he drove around the back of the station and there it was. Thanks to my rewards card, we saved 5 cents on each gallon, paying $2.959 each for 11.454 gallons. The car had gone 431.3 miles on that tank, which isn't bad.
We were back on the road at 4:34. We were now hitting Atlanta traffic and we'd have to drive through the city to reach the home on the other side, where a college classmate's of K lives. She is a pianist and her husband works for their Jewish congregation as a therapist. I met them before K and I were even married. On the way, we saw this pair of cool buildings, with really neat roof ornamentation.

We arrived at 5:48, a little later than planned, due to traffic. The odometer read 56,240.
One of their daughters and her daughter were staying with them, before being transferred with the husband/father to another country courtesy of the State Department. The little girl was quite charming and friendly.
There was quite the feast of salad, barbecued burgers, corn on the cob, etc. We had a great time eating and chatting. Then, K's friend J  was kind enough to accompany him sight reading on her piano, so that he could get in a practice of what he is playing at ClarinetFest. They haven't had the chance to do that in a long time.
We bid them farewell at 10:35 and drove 15 minutes to a nearby Hampton Inn. When we got there, the odometer read 56,246.  There was a delay in checking in due to teenagers, who were staying in the hotel. Then, we couldn't get into room 504 easily and they had to send someone up to help with the key.
The room seemed quite nice for one night. I was quite surprised when I looked out the window and saw that across the highway were the two buildings I'd admired on the road. It turns out that the ornamentation lights up!

It was a good first day of touring!