The Monroe County Heritage Museum created this walking tour of the downtown Monroeville area in 2002. The self-guided tour is designed to familiarize visitors with Monroeville as world-famous writers Harper Lee and Truman Capote “knew it during their childhood in the 1930s.”
Lee is a native and longtime resident of Monroeville and is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Capote was a childhood friend of Lee’s and wrote a number of books, including “In Cold Blood” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” He had relatives in Monroeville and spent much of his childhood there.
Having worked and lived in Monroeville for a number of years, I was already familiar with the streets and locations on the tour, but it had always irked me that I’d never officially taken the tour. To my pleasant surprise, I actually took notice of some things that I’d never paid much attention to and learned some things about the old town that I didn’t known.
I decided to take the tour on Saturday morning and parked right in front of the Old Monroe County Courthouse, which now houses the Monroe County Heritage Museums. I stepped out of my truck at exactly eight o’clock on the dot and aside from the occasional jogger or passing car, the streets were pretty much deserted at that time of day. Armed with a brochure that outlines the tour and includes a map, I set off and found myself back at my truck a little over an hour later, at 9:06 a.m. In all, the tour is 2.2 miles long.
If you’d like to take the tour yourself, copies of the tour brochure are available inside the Old Monroe County Courthouse. If the museum happens to be closed, you’ll find a stack of brochures inside a weatherproof box on the left-hand side of the sign outside the museum’s main entrance.
Along with this post, I’ve included a copy of the tour map, which directs you to 33 important spots along the tour. These spots, as indicated on the map, include:
1. The Old Monroe County Courthouse
2. Atticus Finch Monument and Camellia Garden
3. The New Monroe County Courthouse
4. West Side of the Square
5. Katz Department Store
6. Thompson’s Bakery
7. E.T. Millsap’s Mule Barn and Feed Store
8. South Mount Pleasant Avenue
9. Monroeville Elementary School
10. Maple Street
11. Vanity Fair Mills
12. Nu-Modern Cleaners
13. Cannon Oil
14. Mel’s Dairy Dream
15. Faulk House Site
16. Dr. G.C. Watson House Site
17. Martin’s Service Center
18. The Medical Store
19. B.H. Stallworth’s
20. City Hotel Site
21. Lee Motor Co.
22. Monroe Motor Co. Site
23. Monroeville Post Office
24. Morgan Furniture Co.
25. Williams Drug Store
26. Barnett and Jackson Building
27. First National Bank Building
28. North Side of the Square
29. Monroe Theatre Site
30. Wee Diner Site
31. The Monroe County Library
32. Historic Houses of Pineville Road
33. Pineville/Old Baptist/Hillcrest Cemetery
The brochure includes more information about each of these locations and explains their place in 1930’s Monroeville.
In the end, I enjoyed scratching another item off my bucket list. How many of you have taken this walking tour? What did you think about it? Do you know of any other walking tours worth taking? Which would you recommend and why? Let us know in the comments section below.
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