Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company, Inc. was a company which engaged in a planned urban development in the state of Alabama in the late nineteenth century. On January 11, 1887, as Decatur, Alabama was still rebuilding from the destructive results of the war and the outbreak, the Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company, Inc., was founded by Southerners Eugene C. Gordon, C.C. Harris, and W.W. Littlejohn, and Northerners Hiram Bond and William E. Forest M.D. of New York. Together they and others invested $7.5 million toward purchase and development of 5,600 acres (2,300 ha) of land southeast of the city. The company formed a new city as a means of reinventing Decatur as a progressive manufacturing and transportation center following the war. They named their new city New Decatur and gave it the nickname "The Chicago of the South," referencing its status as a transportation hub, and as a marketing tool toward Midwesterners. New Decatur was designed as a planned community with the help of famed landscape architect Nathan Franklin Barrett.
Decatur is a city in Morgan and Limestone counties in the State of Alabama. The city, nicknamed "The River City", is located in Northern Alabama on the banks of Wheeler Lake, along the Tennessee River. It is the largest city and county seat of Morgan County. The population in 2010 was 55,683.
Major Eugene C. Gordon was a railroad construction engineer, Confederate Officer in the Civil War and subsequently founded and led Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company, Inc. which developed the area near Decatur, Alabama which was for a period of time a separate municipality Albany, Alabama.
Hiram Bond was born May 10, 1838 in Farmersville, Cattaraugus County, New York and died in Seattle March 29, 1906. He was a corporate lawyer, investment banker and an investor in various businesses including gold mining. His family are descended from William Bond (Massachusetts) an early 17th-century immigrant from Bury St. Edmunds in East Anglia. He was the son of Hiram Bond M.D. and Almeda Slusser and was married to Laura Ann Higgins. He had two children- Louis Whitford Bond born in New York City, New York in 1865 and Marshall Latham Bond born in Orange, Virginia in 1867. He attended Rushford Academy, Rushford, New York, and earned a bachelor's degree from Hamilton College. He earned much of the money for his own education as a distributor of maps and atlases. Among his successes were becoming a publisher, and taking over the rights to a map of the United States which had been prepared by Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Southerner who was a United States cartography officer. Maury, who decided to join the Confederacy, had left the work unpaid for in New York. He matriculated at Harvard Law School, but before graduation he was hired as a law clerk by Chauncey Depew, a friend and neighbor of his father in law Michael Dunning Higgins of Peekskill.
The company advertised this new development across the Northeast and Midwestern United States as "the healthiest city in the South," following the installation of a modern water and drainage system, which was thought to ward off disease. The new city saw an initial boom, but slowed soon after due to deteriorating economic conditions. Eventually, though, because of the city's industries and quality of life, many Americans began to move south to New Decatur and inhabit the city.
The founders together and separately were also involved with starting other businesses mills, banks insurance companies in Decatur and the region. Hiram Bond later became Chief Operating Officer of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company between 1889 and 1891 and was involved in the sale of tens of thousands of acres of resource lands in Tennessee held as an investment by the Decatur to that corporation.
The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (1852–1952), also known as TCI and the Tennessee Company, was a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations. Originally based entirely within Tennessee, it relocated most of its business to Alabama in the late nineteenth century. With a sizable real estate portfolio, the company owned several Birmingham satellite towns, including Ensley, Fairfield, Docena, Edgewater and Bayview.
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Huntsville is a city located primarily in Madison County in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama. Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County. The city extends west into neighboring Limestone County and south into Morgan County. Huntsville's population was 180,105 as of the 2010 census. Huntsville is the third-largest city in Alabama and the largest city in the five-county Huntsville-Decatur-Albertville, AL Combined Statistical Area, which at the 2013 census estimate had a total population of 683,871. The Huntsville Metropolitan Area's population was 417,593 in 2010 to become the 2nd largest in Alabama. Huntsville metro's population reached 441,000 by 2014.
The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles (1,049 km) long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names, as many of the Cherokee had their territory along its banks, especially in eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama. Its current name is derived from the Cherokee village Tanasi.
The Tennessee Valley is the drainage basin of the Tennessee River and is largely within the U.S. state of Tennessee. It stretches from southwest Kentucky to north Georgia and from northeast Mississippi to the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The border of the valley is known as the Tennessee Valley Divide. The Tennessee Valley contributes greatly to the formation of Tennessee's legally recognized Grand Divisions.
Sloss Furnaces is a National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. It operated as a pig iron-producing blast furnace from 1882 to 1971. After closing, it became one of the first industrial sites in the U.S. to be preserved and restored for public use. In 1981, the furnaces were designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior.
Wheeler Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River between Lauderdale County and Lawrence County in the U.S. state of Alabama. It is one of nine dams on the river owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the mid-1930s as part of a New Deal-era initiative to improve navigation on the river and bring flood control and economic development to the region. The dam impounds the Wheeler Lake of 67,070 acres (27,140 ha) and its tailwaters feed into Wilson Lake.
The Huntsville–Decatur–Albertville, AL Combined Statistical Area is the most populated sub-region of North Alabama, and is the second fastest growing region in the State of Alabama, with 774,480 living within the CSA. It is also currently the 64th largest CSA in the country.
The Decatur Daily is a daily newspaper serving Decatur, Alabama and the Tennessee Valley in the North Alabama area of the United States. As of September 30, 2006, it had an average daily circulation of 20,824 and a Sunday circulation of 23,840. Along with The Anniston Star, it is one of only two family-owned daily newspapers remaining in Alabama.
The Delano Park, operated by the Decatur Parks and Recreation Board, is the oldest park in the city of Decatur, Alabama.
James Withers Sloss was a planter, industrialist, and the founder of the Sloss Furnaces, and a leading figure in the early development of Birmingham, Alabama.
John Hamilton Inman was an American capitalist who invested in cotton, coal, iron and steel, and railroads, especially in the impoverished American South during the Reconstruction Era. While he is remembered as a tycoon in the age of laissez-faire, cut-throat capitalism, he nevertheless helped the economic development of his native state and the South in general.
Albany, Alabama, also known as New Decatur, Alabama, was a city in Morgan County, Alabama, United States, situated immediately to the southeast of the city of Decatur near the Tennessee River. New Decatur/Albany existed as a city from 1887 until 1927, when it merged with the city of Decatur. Today, it exists as a neighborhood within the city of Decatur, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Edward Jackson Sanford was an American manufacturing tycoon and financier, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the late 19th century. As president or vice president of two banks and more than a half-dozen companies, Sanford helped finance Knoxville's post-Civil War industrial boom, and was involved in nearly every major industry operating in the city during this period. Companies he led during his career included Sanford, Chamberlain and Albers, Mechanics' National Bank, Knoxville Woolen Mills, and the Coal Creek Coal Mining and Manufacturing Company.
Hull Property Group is a shopping mall management company based in Augusta, Georgia. It was founded in 1977. The company owns, manages, and re-develops shopping malls in smaller markets throughout the south and mid-west United States.
James William McQueen (1866-1925) was an American businessperson. He served as the president of Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Company from 1918 to 1925.
The Cedar Creek Furnace is a former blast furnace site near Russellville in Franklin County, Alabama. It was the first iron ore furnace in Alabama, preceding an industry that would come to dominate the state's economy in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Alfred Huger Moses (1840–1918) was an American banker and investor who founded the city of Sheffield, Alabama.
