Campus No. 805, Huntsville, AL

 An extant asset

I know that this place isn’t technically a mall.  Even though it has a common corridor with different places of business that can only be accessed from this indoor corridor, it’s not a mall in the traditional sense, but this is really a pretty cool place in Huntsville’s quickly gentrifying Westside.  In fact, Campus # 805 along with Lowe Mill Arts Center jumps started this renaissance in West Huntsville.

1- Map of Campus No. 805.  2 & 3- Yellowhammer Brewing Company.  4- Butler Green, the athletic fields of the former school turned into a park.  5 to 8- Straight to Ale Brewing, located primarily in the former school’s gym.

Campus No. 805 now serves as the home to Straight to Ale and Yellowhammer Brewing, two local microbreweries.  The setting for this home is a former Huntsville city public school, shuttered as enrollment dropped due to the deteriorating neighborhood surrounding it.  But they saw the potential in both the building and the neighborhood.

1-2- Straight to Ale’s front exterior.  3 to 5- The refurbished exterior of the former Butler High School/ Stone Middle School.  6- Hops and Guac on the facility’s western end.

The main building, now called the Stone Center, opened as S.R. Butler High School in 1951, the second of the then emerging town’s high schools.  It served this role until 1967 when the building became outsized for the number of students moving into the area.  It became Roy L. Stone Middle School when a newer and larger campus for Butler was built nearby.

1 to 4- The bottom level interior of Campus No. 805.  5 & 6- The “secret entrance” to Straight to Ale’s speakeasy behind the lockers.

Stone Middle School closed in 2009 and sat empty for more than half a decade before being purchased by developer Randy Schrimsher.  His vision was something unique to the region and would become a lynchpin in the city’s coming explosive growth. Straight to Ale and Yellowhammer were the first to join, and the place has seen much success since.

1 to 4- Stairwells and hallways at Campus No. 805.  5- Monkeynaut!  6- The entrance to Hops and Guac.

Straight to Ale settled into the gymnasium, where squeaky shoes have been replaced with brewing equipment.  Much of the memorabilia marking the place as a former school remains, including the green and gold basketball court.  Yellowhammer made their home across the school’s athletic field to what is now called the Student Union Building.  The old athletic fields were developed into a city park, which ties the entire campus together.

Campus No. 805’s upper level.

Walking the white cinder block halls certainly can bring one back to their own school days.  Orange lockers still line the hallways, though behind the classroom doors lie art studios, dance halls and even axe throwing.  Bars such as Hops n Guac, Lone Goose Saloon and even a speakeasy whose doorway is hidden behind unassuming lockers can be found throughout.

1 to 3- Straight to Ale’s brewery equipment in the former gym.  4- Beer and video games.  5 & 6- Regalia from the building that was once a middle school.

These days, there has been much successive development behind Campus No. 805.  Along what was once a depressed stretch of Governor’s Drive, new development has exploded.  New apartments are being built while the entire Mill Creek neighborhood is being redeveloped.  Just a block away, another entertainment venue, Stovehouse, has opened in a repurposed oven factory.  It’s exciting to see, and none has been built out yet to its full capacity.  I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Campus # 805 lease plan ca. 2021.  View the full PDF version here.

Campus # 805 official website

Dunnavant's Mall, Huntsville, AL

 A relic of retail

When first moving to Huntsville in the early nineties, I was surprised at the number of shopping malls located in a town of only, back then at least, 150,000.  There was the behemoth Madison Square, the “secondary” mall Parkway City, The Mall and Heart of Huntsville, though these last two were on their deathbeds.  But wedged in between Heart of Huntsville and Fort Book (what locals affectionately call the downtown main branch of the public library) there was a preppy looking red brick building that I thought was nothing more than additional downtown office space.

Clippings from the Huntsville Times before the mall's opening.

I later got to know the single story building surrounded by handsome crimson arches as the Huntsville Hospital Medical Mall, an auxiliary clinic just down the street from the main hospital campus.  It intrigued me that it was called a medical “mall,” so I looked into the history of the building a little more closely.  It turns out that well before it hosted nurses and patients in buttless gowns, it hosted shoppers at Huntsville’s very own, now defunct department store, Dunnavant’s.

Dunnavant’s Mall opening advertisement ca. 1965.  View the full PDF version here.

Dunnavant’s started out in a historic, tri-level building erected in 1905 on the corner of Clinton Avenue and Washington Street just off of the downtown square.  P.S. Dunnavant took over the space in 1925, opening his dry goods store in what was then a town of only 8,000.  It grew to be the premier downtown retail destination in the expanding city, and soon it was decided to move outward to a second location.  This new location would also be the lone anchor of what was to be Huntsville’s second shopping mall, Dunnavant’s Mall.

1- The main entrances are still adorned by eighties style dark class porticos.  2- The former mall’s exterior.  3- The building once housing the Dunnavant’s department store.  4- The former Dunnavant’s Mall up close.

Opened on 10 October 1963, Dunnavant’s Mall and its 30,000 square foot anchor surrounded by eighteen smaller shops was built to complement rather than compete with its next door neighbor Heart of Huntsville. Unlike its companion, however, Dunnavant’s Mall debuted as a fully enclosed center, the first in the city.

Dunnavant’s Mall lease plan ca. 1970.  View the full PDF version here.

In the ensuing decade, Dunnavant’s Mall expanded northward to 113,000 total square feet and approximately twenty-five shops.  Both the Clinton and Washington location of the anchor as well as the mall store were shuttered sometime in the late seventies following the death of P.S. Dunnavant.  The smaller stores started vacating and it was only a matter of time before Dunnavant’s Mall would lock its doors for the last time.

Different views of the distinctive arches surrounding what’s now the Huntsville Hospital Medical Mall.

The structure, still in good shape despite its age, was renovated with its present red brick arched façade and re-christened in the eighties as the Huntsville Hospital Medical Mall, having had all of its commercial retailers depart by that time.  Since then, it remains a popular destination downtown, although for much different reasons than its original intent.

The main concourse of the former Dunnavant’s Mall, with the Subway shop to the left.

What was at one time Dunnavant’s Mall remains an important and historical fixture in the city.  It has outlasted all of its peers besides Parkway Place and Bridge Street Towne Center, both of which were built much more recently in the new millennium.  Although the only retail establishment it hosts is a small Subway outlet, it’s still easy to imagine shoppers making their way down the main corridor decades ago when the city was a much different place.

Dunnavant's on Wikipedia