Click image to enlarge. For more than forty years, four of Anniston’s finest landmarks have been dodging the wrecker’s ball. The city school board has long wanted to redevelop the site where the houses of Noble Park (Crowan Cottage and the Hamilton, Johnston, and Noble-Acker houses) are located. Unable to build an educational campus on the site, the school board is now offering the buildings to the highest bidder. This site just happens to be located on one of the few remaining large tracts in the city with no preservation ordinance to protect the buildings. As a result, anything could happen to them.
These buildings are tangible reminders of the two most important periods in Anniston’s early development: the late 1800s when the city became known as the “Model City of the New South” and its later boom period as the “soil pipe capitol of the world” in the early twentieth century. The 1887 Crowan Cottage is one of Alabama’s finest Queen Anne–style houses. Local preservationists are publicizing the plight of Noble Park. Their only hope is that new owners will step forward, take charge, and banish the long-threatened bulldozer and wrecking ball.
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