Memory Of The Week: The History Of Tuscaloosa's First Skyscraper

Editor's Note: As part of an ongoing partnership with our friends at Historic Tuscaloosa, Patch will be bringing you a quick piece of local history per week provided by those working hard to preserve the memories of our community.

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TUSCALOOSA, AL — This installment of Historic Tuscaloosa's Memory of the Week takes a look back at Tuscaloosa's first skyscraper and its long-forgotten landmark in downtown Tuscaloosa.

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Few are likely to remember the electric sign atop the Alston Building that read "Try Tuscaloosa," with Historic Tuscaloosa's Event & Digital Media Coordinator Sarah-Katherine Helms telling Patch that the signage came after the downtown skyscraper was first completed in 1909.

She then cited a May 16, 1911, article in The Tuscaloosa Times-Gazette that said “the minutes of the last meeting were read and approved, and President Blair reported that the electric sign, which will bear the slogan 'Try Tuscaloosa' had been ordered and would soon be put in place on top of the Alston Building.”

This new-age installment came when Samuel Fitts Alston was president of City National Bank, a city alderman and a civic booster.

Helms said in 1907 Alston decided that Tuscaloosa needed its own tall building and worked to clear the burned ruins of the old Tuscaloosa County Courthouse at the corner of Greensboro Avenue and Sixth Street to make room for the Alston Building.

The Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History and Reconciliation Foundation says locals even bragged that the Alston Building was the “tallest building east of Chicago on a dirt road.”

ALSO READ: Memory Of The Week: Merchant's Bank & Trust Building (1920s)

According to the Tuscaloosa Area Virtual Museum, University of Alabama professor Robert Mellown said the Alston Building was more about civic boosterism than real estate prices.

Indeed, he commented that the available property was not the inspiration for the building being built as a skyscraper. Rather, its seven-story frame was intended to catch the eye.

Once the building was constructed, Helms said town boosters immediately saw their chance and set up a large electric sign on the roof that beamed “Try Tuscaloosa" — an act that highlighted Alston's love of being a civic cheerleader.

Helms also said The Board of Trade — the precursor to the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama — had its offices in the Alston Building.

What's more, on May 22, 1943, future Alabama Governor George Wallace and Northport native and fellow future governor Lurleen Burns were married in the Alston Building, which held the Justice of the Peace office.

As Patch previously reported, Suite 401 was also once the office of Robert Shelton, who was responsible for uniting multiple chapters of the Ku Klux Klan to form United Klans of America, which was its most powerful incarnation of the infamous hate group up to that point.

ALSO READ: The Rise & Fall Of Robert Shelton: The Man Who United The Klan

The office sits empty today and, justifiably, there's no historic marker to denote the specific office space.

In 1965, columnist Drew Pearson described the three-room downtown office, remarking on the purple Imperial Wizard robe and hood in a plastic garment bag hanging near a Confederate flag and a picture of George Wallace — who had been married in the same building a couple of decades before.

The office in the Alston Building also served as a distribution point for the United Klans of America's publication, "The Fiery Cross."

At present, the Alston Building is a site on the Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History Trail and sits mostly empty, apart from a few tenants and a boutique on its ground level.

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