Remembering Park Lane: 1947-2012

Park Lane was a familiar place to Blanche Fields, 96, when she sold her Forest Park home and moved in 20 years ago. Her daughter, Betty Byers, had lived there in the 1960s, and her granddaughter was born there. Back then, she knew Mr. Aurelius Augustus Evans, then owner as well as father and grandfather of present owners and managers F.A. “Rele” Evans and John Evans.

Fields, like many residents who have lived in the complex for decades, moved out this summer as its owners, Evson Inc., began preparations to make way for the new Lane Parke development in Mountain Brook Village.

 “It broke my heart when I had to leave,” Fields said of moving to nearby Canterbury Gardens. “I don’t know how to tell you — it was just home.”

And home those 19 buildings were for 65 years of Park Lane residents. For many, passing the office manager’s “test” for admission, meeting people in the laundry room and making lifelong friends are vivid markers in their journey at the start, or end, of adulthood.

From the beginning

In 1947, fresh after building an apartment complex in Mobile, A. A. Evans built the series of two-story buildings on 21.5 acres on the western edge of Mountain Brook Village.

Park Lane was part of a boom of new apartment construction in Birmingham in anticipation of a housing shortage at the end of World War II. Funding for the project was provided through Section 608 of the National Housing Act of 1937 through which mortgages for private apartment construction were guaranteed by the federal government.

In 1948, the first residents — mostly young professionals, young married couples and retired people — moved in. Units had oak floors, plaster walls and 36-inch Magic Chef ranges. Surrounding the buildings were newly planted saplings that would become the mature trees we see today.

At that time, Mountain Brook Village was primarily a hub of filling stations. The Birmingham Country Club driving range was located where the Birmingham Botanical Gardens is now. The Western shopping center property, which would be built in the mid-50s, was a bog.

“In 1947 it was a pretty country-looking place besides Birmingham Country Club,” Rele Evans said, recalling how he helped survey the field where the apartments would be built.

Air conditioning would be installed in the apartments in 1969-70 and kitchens and bath were modernized as required, but beyond that the buildings remained much the same for decades.

Newly weds then

C.H. Chichester Jr., 90, lived at Park Lane with his wife after he returned from the Korean War in 1953. He can easily list off the names of neighbors from those years.

 “A lot of good people lived there,” he said. “It was so convenient and economical. We would get together three or four days during the week. None of us had any money to speak of, and it was very pleasant.”

Likewise, Ann Henagan and her husband Vann’s newlywed neighbors from 1958-1963 would become lifelong friends.

“It was where most people got started, and we were all in the same boat living payday to payday,” she said. “At the end of month, we were all almost out of money and would pool our food and have meals together.”

Henagan lived one building over from Martin Devore, who remained a Park Lane resident for more than 50 years and would be her daughter’s neighbor at Park Lane decades later.

The Henagans and their neighbors shopped at Gilchrist and Browdy’s in Mountain Brook Village, and everyone bought their gas from Gus Hogue, who owned a gas station where Barton-Clay is now.

Henagan recalled one woman who lived near the floodplains driving her car through the back of her garage by accident.

“There are a lot of memories wrapped up in those old buildings for a lot of us,” she said. “There were always nice people that lived there. It was a place your mother would like for you to live when you just got out of college.”

Henagan’s daughter followed suit.

The first test

When Susan Henagan Logan graduated from college in 1988, the requirement to know someone to get in, like many things at Park Lane, had not changed. Her parents had gotten in on a recommendation from an executive vice president at First National Bank, where her dad worked. Likewise, Logan made sure to tell Mrs. Ratcliffe, the longtime manager, that her parents had lived there.

 “She wanted to know who you knew when you were turning in your application,” Logan said. “When I told her that, she had a unit available for me the next month. And you knew whom you were living with because you had to pass that woman’s test. Everyone who was there was older, or she knew your family or they knew the right people.”

Logan’s then-fiancé, Thomas, thought he could get into Park Lane on this own, but, not being from Birmingham, he did not pass the test and was only able to move to the complex after they married.

 “She was a pistol,” Rele Evans recalled of Mrs. Ratcliffe. “She had rules that there were to be no bikinis and no inappropriate behavior.”

John Evans remembered when he first took over managing Park Lane that a woman came to inquire about her daughter moving into the complex. He told her the deposit was half the first month’s rent, but the woman kept inquiring about the move-in cost.

“I had to pay $500 for my older daughter to move in,” she told him.

Apparently, Mrs. Ratcliffe ran a side business as well.

A community, young and old

Logan said it was still the “newlyweds and nearly deads” who lived there in the 80s.

“It was a great community,” she said. “Young people kind of took care of the old people, and the old people knew your comings and goings. It was all very prim and proper.”

Logan had grown up in Mountain Brook and found herself living near childhood friends and others she found a connection with.

Logan’s husband was in law school at Cumberland at the time, so she said a big night would be walking down to Davenport’s to share a pizza and beers and looking in shops like Pappagallo.

“If it was near pay day, we’d stop at Baskin Robbins and get an ice cream cone,” she said. “We had no money, but all our entertainment was right there with Botanical Gardens across the street.”

From 1999-2002 Susan Dumas and her husband, George, lived in a second floor apartment in the flood zone where rent was cheaper, and it once flooded twice in six months. The City of Mountain Brook would complete flood mitigation projects for the area in the years to follow.

One Saturday the Dumases came home from a football game, and George’s old car was missing in flood waters that had risen. After looking around, they found it in the creek behind the apartment building.

“One of our best family stories is that car floating away,” Dumas said.

A legacy for the future

Susan Henagan Logan is mournful for the end of Park Lane.

“I’d like for my girls to live there one day, but it won’t be the same,” she said. “So many people in this community who are somebody started off at Park Lane. You could walk to the villages and knew you were in a safe place. Now there’s not any really place for a young couple to live before they start a family.”

She fears that the new development will not be as affordable as Park Lane and that her 18-year-old daughter will not be able to live there when she moves back to Birmingham and starts a teaching job.

However, from the time the Evans family began looking at redeveloping the Park Lane and Western shopping center properties a decade ago, they found it would be cost prohibitive to remodel the old Park Lane buildings.

“Granddad built them so well that it was a major ordeal to do any updates on the buildings,” John Evans said. “The lack of washer/dryer hookup was our Achilles heel.”

The Evans did, however, see a need for rental properties to remain.

In the new Lane Parke development, there will 276 new apartments on 10 acres, as compared to the 22 Park Lane acres.

The Evans family hopes that their new Lane Parke development will foster the same kind of community that college grads, newlyweds and retirees have found at Park Lane for so many years.

“Dad did a lot for Mountain Brook, and we feel that we are obligated to continue that legacy the best we can,” Rele Evans said.

What’s next for the Park Lane property

John Evans, principal of Evson Inc., said he anticipates demolition of Park Lane apartments by mid to late November.

Residents were cleared out by the end of September this year. Many longtime residents moved to Canterbury Gardens, Redmont Gardens or the new The Hill complex in downtown Homewood.

Evans also said that there is security on the property even as the buildings are unoccupied.

They anticipate construction on the apartments will start in February 2013 and retail space construction will start around the middle of 2013. Evans said their team is planning for as little disruption to Mountain Brook Village as possible during the construction.

“We feel a twinge of nostalgia, but you have to move ahead,” Rele Evans said. “So we are eagerly looking forward to the new development because we think it will be a step up for Mountain Brook.”