Then Photos Curated by Jake Collins & Courtesy of Birmingham Public Library
Now Photos by Lindsey Culver
If you flip through photos of Homewood from the decades that followed its 1926 incorporation, some buildings will look unfamiliar in 2019. Today you can no longer see places like the original the Hollywood Country Club and Edgewood Drug Store, but many other buildings, like Union Baptist Church and Shades Cahaba School, still very much look the same. Still other places in Homewood bear some resemblance to their early portraits in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, yet have changed too. Here we juxtapose old pictures and new side-by-side so you can see for yourself what has evolved and what remains in home sweet Homewood.
Rob’e Mans Automotive Service sits on the site of a former Texaco station. You can still see the same second story of a Union Baptist Church behind the Rob’e Mans building on the right as you can behind the Texaco from the 1953 photo.
The simple box of a building Homewood Barber Shop now occupies was a dry cleaner in 1952. The front façade door and windows still are in the same place, but much of the original marquee is now a simple white.
Did you know Cahaba Cycles was once Homewood Theatre? It might no longer show films, but the top section of the building still looks the same.
You can still see how the tops of this brick building on 18th Street are shaped the same as today’s Bob’s Bikes as it was when it was Artistic Beauty Shop in 1939.
The roof has been modernized, but this corner building still holds its original shape from this 1947 photo as home to Nations Boutique next to Cookie Fix. You can also note there’s now no open space to the building’s right as it connects to a more recent structure.
The Real & Rosemary building on 29th Avenue South has been home to many businesses over the years including a beauty salon in 1947, but its exterior shape is still quite recognizable. The latter photo was taken in 1952.
Jack’s hasn’t always been in its current location across from Soho Square. When this photo was taken in 1962, it made its home just down the street on a corner lot where the Homewood Police Station now stands.
In 1939 Huffstutler & Co., the name a hardware store in Central Avenue now bears, was a real state, rental and insurance business in the brick building where O’Henry’s now serves up coffee and pastries.
Complete Feet’s brick structure towers over its neighbors now as did its predecessor in the brick building on 18th Street. Mantooth Interiors now operates where Ben Franklin Stores was, and B. Bayer & Co. is in a former garage space.
Caveat Coffee renovated an old home into its coffee shop. Its front has evolved since this photo was taken in 1965, but the left side and fireplace are still in place.
In 1944 there was more green on Central Avenue surrounding the Howard Cuthrell Building and the millwork repair business inside. Today the building houses Iron Tribe Fitness.
In the spring of 1949 tall skinny trees stood in the view from Homewood Central Park where the playground is now looking across Central Avenue to where Hero Doughnuts and Nabeel’s Café stand today.
This quaint signature corner in Edgewood has largely remained unchanged, except that a street car once ran up Broadway and into Oxmoor Road. Today it’s home to Edgewood Frame Shop and Trilogy Leather.
In 1959 you could buy groceries and do your laundry right on Oxmoor Road in Edgewood. Today you can order pizza and barbecue instead, but many of the architectural details remain.
