By Anne Ruisi
The introduction to the history of Redmont, “Worthy of Remembrance,” by Cathy Criss Adams, notes, “Redmont was born of a convergence of visionary developers and talented designers confronting the challenge of constructing on a mountain at a moment in time when extravagance was acceptable and affluence a granted.”
The grand homes in a variety of architectural styles that characterize Redmont are as stunning now as they were when built for the wealthy on the summit of Red Mountain, away from the stink and smog of the industrial powerhouse that was early 20th century Birmingham. Cooling breezes blew across the mountaintop landscape to offer relief from searing summer temperatures.
Adams, who lives on Aberdeen Road in a 1923 home built for industrialist Charles DeBardeleben and his wife, Margaret, said the area was first called Milner Heights, after the family that developed that side of Redmont.
Later, after real estate businessman Robert Jemison Jr., who developed Mountain Brook, developed the rest of the area, he christened it Redmont, Adams said.
The area’s historic importance was recognized when The Redmont Park Historic District was named to the National Register of Historic Places. A marker placed at Arlington Avenue and Aberdeen Road notes it’s the state’s second-oldest garden-landscaped residential area. The historic district extends into a section of Redmont that spills into Mountain Brook.
The marker says Redmont was developed from 1911 to 1935 by Jemison, Hill Ferguson and Henry Key Milner using landscape architects C.W. Leavitt of New York City, George H. Miller of Boston, Birmingham landscape architect William H. Kessler and engineer John Glander.
The district contains “Alabama’s finest collection of residential architecture of that era and includes the state’s best examples of the domestic use of Tudor, Spanish Revival, Classical Revival, English Cottage, Dutch Revival, Chateauesque, and Renaissance Revival,” the marker states.
In the more than 100 years since Redmont’s beginnings, a number of notable people have lived there. These include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who lived at 3325 Altamont Road in the 1920s; Paul “Bear” Bryant, who lived for a time with his in-laws at 2615 Aberdeen Road; industrialist James McWane at 2845 Stratford Road; and Dr. Lloyd Noland at 3240 Sterling Road. Noland was a giant of early 20th century Birmingham sanitation, who went on to found the former Fairfield hospital that bore his name.
