Photo courtesy of Eddie Griffith.
The Edgewood Electric Railway in the 1920s.
In September 1926, residents south of Red Mountain went to the polls to decide whether their towns would continue to exist. The question was a merger: whether Edgewood, Rosedale and Grove Park would dissolve themselves into a single new city in Shades Valley. Within months, on October 29, 1926, Homewood existed. That was the point.
Red Mountain separated Shades Valley from Birmingham, and in the early 20th century that separation was the valley’s whole identity. Birmingham was the fastest-growing industrial city in the South. The valley was the other side of the ridge in every sense: green where Birmingham was gray, quiet where Birmingham was loud.
“By joining together, these communities have been able to provide the city services that Homewood residents enjoy today including its award-winning school system and its library,” said Eddie Griffith, chairman of the Homewood Historic Preservation Commission. “We also benefit from its outstanding police, fire, public works, and parks and recreation departments. All contribute to the desire to live in the ‘City of Happy Homes,’ as it was called in that era.”
Photo courtesy of Martha Wurtele
Oak Grove Dairy operated in one of the three founding communities of Homewood.
The three communities arrived by different roads. Rosedale came first, platted in the 1880s and sold cheaply to Black buyers after the railroad meant to serve it failed. By the 1900 census, 95% of its residents owned their homes free and clear. Edgewood had an electric railway across the mountain by 1911 and an artificial lake by 1915. Grove Park was the smallest and is the least documented: a residential enclave with almost nothing about its founding surviving in the public record.
By the mid-1920s the three towns shared a valley, a streetcar line and a set of problems none could solve alone. Roads needed paving. Water and sewer service was a patchwork. Three small governments maintained three of everything, and none could afford one of anything done well.
Charles Rice, a local attorney called the Father of Homewood, started a movement to merge the communities, and within months he had it on a ballot. One city could deliver what three towns could not: shared infrastructure, a real tax base, schools everyone wanted for their children.
But a second argument ran underneath the first, and it would define Homewood politics for the next 50 years: Birmingham. The giant across the mountain grew by annexing, and the valley had watched it happen. Everyone in Shades Valley knew what had occurred when Birmingham absorbed nine surrounding towns at once. A scattering of small towns south of the mountain made easy targets. One incorporated city of respectable size could stand on its own.
The merger of 1926 was, among other things, a defensive act. Homewood was founded in part to not be Birmingham.
The compromise that made the merger possible was the name itself. None of the three would lend its name to the new city. A new name gave every resident equal claim on the new identity.
Photo courtesy of Eddie Griffith.
Edgewood in 1959 looked different than it does now.
It is worth pausing on what was surrendered. A town’s name is its memory of itself. The people of Edgewood had built a business district and a lakefront under that name. Rosedale’s name was carried by families who had bought land nobody else wanted and raised churches on it. Folding those identities into an invented word took a level of civic trust that is easy to miss at a century’s distance.
The founders hedged the bet wisely. The old names never left. A hundred years later they are still on the map. Homewood kept its founding communities as neighborhoods, which is why the city has always felt like a collection of small towns that happen to share a government.
“Homewood is a unique community, where our residents recognize our strengths and our individuality,” Homewood Mayor Jennifer Andress said. “At the same time, I have seen a shift toward regional cooperation. We need a strong Jefferson County that attracts economic investment and retains an educated workforce. I strongly believe that when appropriate, it benefits Jefferson County as a whole to work together to address regional issues.”
The Homewood of 1926 was a few thousand residents, a patchwork of paved and unpaved roads and a bet that a valley could govern itself. In 1929 the Spanish Colonial development of Hollywood voted to be annexed into Homewood. The city survived the Depression, a polio epidemic and the recurring question of whether Homewood would remain Homewood at all.
It did remain, and Homewood became the city where everyone wants to live.
“I think people choose to live in Homewood because they recognize that our diversity is our strength,” Mayor Andress said. “Our community has texture, history and authenticity. It’s organic. It is what makes Homewood so incredibly special, from Forest Brook to Patriot Park, from Edgewood to Rosedale, from Mayfair to Hollywood and every special neighborhood in between.”
What’s next for Homewood is on the minds of everyone as the city celebrates its 100-year anniversary.
Mayor Andress sums it up this way: “We do need to be intentional about protecting what makes Homewood so special. I have been on the council for 10 years, and we have not rezoned one parcel of Neighborhood Preservation District in that time. We have a group of councilors and planning commissioners who work to protect our history, and that needs to continue. Our community in the Valley is so unique, and we must listen to one another and hold each other accountable to keep it so!”
