Photo by Frank Couch.
Images of America: Homewood
Jake Collins and Martha Wurtele look through photos they used for the new Images of America: Homewood book. They worked on the book, which will hit bookshelves Nov. 30, in the Homewood Room of the Homewood Public Library.
Jake Collins and Martha Wurtele are more proud to call themselves listeners than authors.
For Collins, writing history is all about getting to know people. He would know. For the past several years he has spent hours upon hours with a handful of Homewood’s residents who remember Edgewood Lake, for which Lakeshore is named, and homes that existed where shopping malls now stand.
“There’s a lot of people out there that have stories they want to tell people,” Collins said. “Sometimes we get too busy to stop and listen to stories of people’s lives.”
Back in 1984, Wurtele too began documenting Homewood’s history. She interviewed members of older Homewood families, recording oral histories and collecting photos. At the time she was president of the Friends of the Library and gave 30-minute slide show presentations on her research.
In the 1980s Wurtele had dreamed of creating a book, and three decades later she has with Collins, who grew up with her nephew and had contacted her for photos to use for his Homewood History Hunt with students at Homewood Middle School. Their photographic history book, Images of America: Homewood, releases on Nov. 30.
The book is divided into three time periods: early settlers, the time following the city’s incorporation in 1926 and the time following construction of Red Mountain Expressway and I-65.
“The decisions in the 1960s and ’70s made this a long-lasting, successful city,” Collins said.
The most recent chapter features business staples like Brookwood Village and Brookwood Medical Center and favorite hangouts like Dino’s and Sam’s Super Samwiches. Collins said it was important to showcase historical places as well as ones things young people can remember.
“We wanted everyone in Homewood to identify with it,” Collins said.
Among the places of the past featured is the Lowenbrau Haus, a German club in the lower level of what is now Savage’s Bakery, where many well-known bands played when they came to Birmingham.
“If you were here in the ’70s and single, you were there all the time,” Collins said, recalling how his mom had spent time there.
The authors said they had a hard time narrowing down images to fit in the book’s 208 pages as they worked in the Homewood Room, the unofficial Homewood history archives in the Homewood Public Library. Some areas of Birmingham only date back to the 1960s, but people have lived in the Homewood area since the 1820s, giving the authors more than what they could use in one book.
“There is so much stuff to cover in a little picture book,” Collins said. “There is so much to cover in Homewood.”
Pictures of high school football state championship teams from 1974 and the ones many of their sons played on in the early 2000s made the cut, but others didn’t if their quality wasn’t strong enough. Unfortunately, that meant pieces of Homewood’s history were left out, such as the current Saw’s building, the McDaniel house built around 1870, and Hillcrest Country Club, a golf course that was located where the Palisades is.
The photos are the first things you notice on each page, but Collins said the captions, and ultimately the book, are all about the stories behind them.
“Talking about the people is the most important thing,” Collins said.
The book will be available in hardcover or paperback through Collins or Wurtele or at Alabama Booksmith, Little Professor (formerly known as a nightclub called the Lotus Book, as the book will tell you) or Seibel’s.
