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Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Seth and Shelley Grissom and their children Ann Blevins, 4, and Miller, 1, stand outside their home on La Prado Place in the historic Hollywood neighborhood of Homewood. Their home will be part of the Historic Home Tour celebrating Hollywood’s centennial.
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Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
The Grissom family in their home at 220 La Prado Place, which was built in 1928. The Grissoms’ home is one of three that will be part of the Hollywood Historic Home Tour, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the neighborhood’s beginnings.
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Photos courtesy of Amanda Timko.
Photographs from the 1950s of 220 La Prado Place show the exterior of the property.
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Photos courtesy of Amanda Timko.
Photographs from the 1950s of 220 La Prado Place show the exterior of the property.
The 1918 University of Alabama yearbook described a young student named Clyde H. Nelson, the future creator of Homewood’s Hollywood neighborhood, as “a man’s man — and a woman’s, too, for all that! [H]e’ll be worth a million [by the] time he is thirty.” The yearbook was not wrong.
By 1924, then-26-year-old Nelson was the head of his own real estate company and soon to be elected president of the Birmingham Real Estate Board. Birmingham’s newspapers were awash in advertisements for the homes he offered for sale, alongside reporting about his various exploits.
Nelson dropped invitations to Southside Baptist Church’s Bible school from an airplane, played guitar and sang in a group known as The Realty Trio and, as an amateur thespian, appeared in the first performances held at Birmingham’s Little Theater.
But it would be on the other side of Red Mountain, in the heart of Shades Valley, where the native of Columbiana would etch his most lasting legacy.
In October 1924, with $25,000 in capital, Nelson incorporated the Hollywood Land Company, which acquired a 0.75-mile stretch of land along a newly paved road east of the four-year-old Shades Cahaba School.
It was on this land — once home to County Convict Camp No. 5 — that Nelson envisioned a carefully planned subdivision that would reflect the Spanish-influenced architecture he had seen on visits to Coral Gables, Florida, and Hollywood, California. The latter would be his development’s namesake.
“[Hollywood] is remote only from the smoke, dirt and noise of the city,” a full-page ad in the Birmingham News declared of the “gently rolling” property, profusely wooded with stately pines and sturdy oaks. “It offers the charm and beauty of the countryside, yet presents all the conveniences desired.”
Or, as the ad put it with a little more punch: “Outside the Smoke Zone and out in the Ozone.”
Teaming with University of Pennsylvania-trained architect George P. Turner, Nelson and his business partners embarked upon construction of an initial cluster of show houses. Each was an asymmetrical home built in the Spanish Colonial Revival (or Spanish Mission) style, with red-tiled roofs, stucco walls, prominent arches and welcoming patios and courtyards.
By August 1925, Nelson’s first four homes were completed along Bonita Drive and proudly featured in the Birmingham News’ annual Better Homes Show. The quartet included Nelson’s own home — a residence still standing today at 205 Bonita Drive.
Nelson’s two-story Spanish villa boasted exposed beam ceilings, magnificent archways in the foyer and den, four sets of French doors, a limestone mantel, stucco walls, a terracotta roof and, of course, a large open porch with a tile floor and a fountain.
Throngs of visitors — some estimated as many as 30,000 — crowded Hollywood to tour the Hollywood show homes and see the interiors furnished by local stores such as Loveman, Joseph & Loeb. Ever the showman, Nelson ensured his guests were entertained by Spanish musicians and flamenco dancers.
The success of what Nelson called the Grenada section of Hollywood led him to plan a second phase of development, where he envisioned a collection of English Tudor Revival homes. In 1926, the Better Homes Show showcased 11 of them, including 312 English Circle, with its multiple cross-gable roof, half-timbered exterior and brick fireplace.
“The home ... will be furnished by R.B. Broyles Furniture Company from top to bottom out of regular stocks,” the Birmingham News reported of the English Circle residence. “One of the news features of the R.B. Broyles display will be the Belding-Hall refrigerator equipped with Kelvinator ice machines ...”
“Nappi’s Orchestra will furnish music Sunday,” the News continued. “At night the Alabama Power Company will train plain and colored spotlights on the homes through the murmuring pines, thereby accentuating the rich hues in the stone, brick and rock masonry.”
That same year, Hollywood petitioned to incorporate as a town, with its own mayor and city council. It had nearly 200 residents at the time.
A third show came in May 1927, this time featuring a Spanish villa and an English bungalow. By this point, Nelson could claim over $2 million in home sales in what was, by then, its own town.
“As men with families discover the wonderful good that comes to children raised in the clean and invigorating air of Shades Valley, ... more and more of them will come to Hollywood for home sites,” predicted Ben Cheeseman, one of Nelson’s business partners.
Hollywood would eventually fulfill that vision. But Nelson’s dreams of even greater real estate successes — such as his hopes of developing a massive country club in the former resort of Shelby Springs — foundered in the Great Depression.
Even as Nelson disappeared from the scene (ultimately, it seems, chasing oil claims as a wildcatter in east Texas), families continued to come to Hollywood. The community’s life as an independent municipality ended in 1929, when Homewood annexed Hollywood.
The neighborhood was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.
Seth and Shelley Grissom, with their two young children, are among the families who have called Hollywood home over the last century. Shelley grew up babysitting in a historic Tudor Revival home on the corner of La Prado Place and La Playa Place, but even as a young teenager, she coveted the brick Tudor cottage across the street. In 2016, she and her husband purchased the home, embarking upon a nearly two-year renovation.
The interior of the Grissoms’ home reflects the vision of architect/interior designer Brian Jernigan while, at the same time, still capturing elements of the home’s origins in 1928: the original front door, the clinker brick, a limestone-floored foyer and even the small hole in the dining room floor.
“That’s where the lady of the house could tap a button with her shoe to ring for the servants,” Shelley Grissom said with a mischievous smile.
It’s the character of the home. I drive around the curve on La Prado and see our place sitting on the corner and think, ‘There’s no other house like it.’
Shelley Grissom
Today, there are no servants at 220 La Prado Place — only a soon-to-be kindergartner shadowing her dad in the front yard and a baby asleep in his nursery. In the Grissoms’ eyes, those two may be the best things about the nearly century-old house. But, if pressed, Shelley Grissom has another answer.
“It’s the character of the home,” she said. “I drive around the curve on La Prado and see our place sitting on the corner and think, ‘There’s no other house like it.’ I know every nook and appreciate every creak in the floor — well, except maybe when I’m trying to put the baby down.”
On April 28, the Hollywood Garden Club will offer the chance to walk in century-old footsteps with the Historic Hollywood Tour of Homes. The tour will feature the Grissoms’ home along with the homes at 205 Bonita Drive and 312 English Circle, which were part of the Better Home Shows of 1925 and 1926.
The biennial Historic Home Tour began in the 1980s, but this year’s tour, marking the 100th anniversary of Hollywood’s creation, will be the first tour since 2018. According to the Garden Club, the houses are close enough together to create a comfortable walking tour, and water and lemonade will be offered at each site.
Tickets are $40 and can be bought online in advance or at the door of each home. Proceeds benefit the Garden Club’s neighborhood beautification efforts and Shades Cahaba Elementary.
For tickets, parking details, a tour map and other information, visit bit.ly/hollywoodhometour2024.
