Garden District

Garden District Preservation Association

History

Taking its name from the beautiful wide lawns and tree-lined streets, the area known as Montgomery's Garden District began as the Victorian community of Bellinger Heights on the north end of the neighborhood. Bellinger Heights included development along South Hull and Maury Streets, including Burton Avenue and Finley Avenue. It also included Noble Avenue from Perry Street to McDonough and along McDonough south to Finley. That 1890's residential area remains today, in harmony with the 1900-1910 development along Perry Street from Clanton to Fredrick, and the subsequent early 20th-century growth that follwed, filling in along Court, Perry, South Hull, and the side streets.

The 1886 Montgomery City Directory carried an extensive list of new residential construction projects that had been built in the previous year in "the hills south of town." The first electric trolley system in the nation made residential development farther from town a physical reality, and one of the routes ran out Hull Street to Bellinger Heights, now known as the Garden District. The density of the development on Hull Street is a testament today of the desire to live near the car line.

The antebellum Garden District consisted of multi-acre parcels of rural land, with a few roads of the street grid we know now. The families who owned the parcels are remembered by street names such as Felder, Gilmer, and Cramer. A few antebellum structures remain in the district: one at --- Felder Avenue, another at Gilmer. A third, which has always been in the district but has been moved twice seems to have found a permanent home at 1533 Gilmer. Norman's Bridge Road led into Montgomery from the southern part of the county from early times, and Perry Street extended south toward Felder early as 1853.