2. Edgewood Lake
Decade by decade through Homewood’s first century, from an 83–45 vote in 1926 to the time capsule going into the ground this October.
1. The founding decade — 1926–1936
On Sept. 20, 1926, Edgewood voted 83–45 to merge with Rosedale and Grove Park under a new name. Charles S. Rice, the attorney who led the consolidation, would be remembered as the Father of Homewood. The state recognized the city on Oct. 29. That same year, Clyde Nelson began selling lots along Hollywood Boulevard under the slogan “Out of the Smoke Zone, Into the Ozone.” Hollywood was its own town then. It joined Homewood in 1929.
2. War changes everything — 1936–1946
Birmingham’s wartime mills needed workers, and the workers needed homes beyond the smoke. Homewood’s population grew roughly 74% between 1940 and 1950, the fastest stretch in its history. In 1946, Jefferson County drained Edgewood Lake, the valley’s social heart since 1913, for dam repairs that never came. A hundred acres of dry lakebed passed to Howard College.
3. The boom — 1946–1956
Subdivisions replaced pastures, and the Edgewood and downtown districts became the city’s commercial spines. Homewood annexed Oak Grove, west of Green Springs, whose Zelosophian Academy had been teaching children since 1892, 34 years before there was a Homewood to teach them in.
4. The college and the fight — 1956–1966
Howard College opened its new campus beside the drained lakebed with 1,825 students, its largest enrollment yet, and became Samford University on Nov. 9, 1965. Then Birmingham came calling. Homewood voters turned back annexation in 1959. A second referendum on Aug. 11, 1964, appeared to pass by six votes, 2,423 to 2,417, but the election was challenged for inadequate legal notice, and the Alabama Supreme Court declared it void on Sept. 9, 1966. That Dec. 13, Homewood voted 4,015 to 2,149 to remain itself. No decade did more to guarantee there would be a centennial to celebrate.
5. Rosedale High School Band
5. A city builds its schools — 1966–1976
Under federal court order, Homewood’s schools integrated in 1968–69. Former principal Bill Gross later said it went smoothly because Rosedale children and white children already knew one another. Rosedale educator Mamie Foster sat with Mayor Bob Waldrop and Gross to plan a school system of Homewood’s own, which needed federal approval. The city created it in 1970. Homewood High opened in December 1972, and the Patriot Band formed the same year in the tricorn hats and red-white-and-blue uniforms it still wears.
6. Downtown holds on — 1976–1986
The mall came for Homewood’s main street and did not get it. Brookwood Village opened in 1973, and 18th Street kept filling with businesses that meant to stay: Little Professor, O’Carr’s, Shaia’s. On Lakeshore Drive, the old Hollywood Country Club came back to life in 1979 as Brothers Music Hall, drawing touring rock acts and crowds the mayor called a headache. It burned in 1984.
7. A church becomes a library — 1986–1996
The Homewood Public Library opened at 1721 Oxmoor Road in the former Homewood Church of Christ, bought by the city in 1984. The library had begun in 1941 in a single room at City Hall, when Homewood counted 7,397 residents. It has been growing since, expanded again in 2020. In 1992 the city adopted a plan for 18th Street: wider sidewalks, trees and a sign ordinance so the storefronts stopped shouting over each other.
8. SoHo Square — 1996–2006
Homewood built itself a new downtown. Excavation began in May 2004 on a full block of 18th Street, and by 2005 SoHo Square stood there: $55 million, a new City Hall over ground-floor retail, and 76 condominiums above, all sold before the building opened. The year before, the Rosedale Historic District joined the National Register, 143 buildings across 250 acres built by and for Black families since the 1880s. One block was new. The other had been there the whole time.
9. Downtown Homewood
9. Downtown becomes a destination — 2006–2016
Homewood sold its old City Hall in 2007, and on April 2, 2009, a 111-room Aloft hotel opened on the site, a $20 million building aimed at young professionals who wanted to walk to dinner. It worked. Downtown began filling with people who did not live here, and the restaurants along 18th Street noticed. The Homewood Star launched in April 2011.
10. One hundred — 2016–2026
The city approached its centennial doing the things that built it: filling its schools, packing Central Park, arguing lovingly about parking. Then it changed how it governs itself. On Sept. 24, 2024, residents voted 1,787 to 1,565 to adopt a council-manager government, the largest structural change at City Hall since incorporation; the new council took office Nov. 3, 2025. On Oct. 29, 2026, Homewood turns one hundred and buries a time capsule for the residents of 2126, who will open it in a city that exists because 83 people said yes on a September Monday in 1926.
