Historic Tuscaloosa Memory Of The Week: Downtown Curb Market (1930)

TUSCALOOSA, AL — As part of a new partnership with our friends at Historic Tuscaloosa, Patch will be bringing you a quick piece of local history per week provided by those working hard to preserve the memories of our community.

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For the first installment in our ongoing series, Historic Tuscaloosa offered up a photo of the Curb Market in downtown Tuscaloosa, circa 1930.

Historic Tuscaloosa says the market was located on the grounds of the old Tuscaloosa County Courthouse until it was torn down for the current courthouse to be built about 1962.

Historic Tuscaloosa's Event & Digital Media Coordinator Sarah-Katherine Helms also identified the woman in the photo as Ruth Evans Dunn, who sold flowers at the curb market in the early 1930s.

"She married Homer M. Dunn Sr., who started the family flower business in Tuscaloosa County after moving from Walker County," Helms told Patch. "The business continued in several phases, involving their three sons, wives, and seven grandchildren. The last Dunn flower business was Dunn Nursery and Garden Center, which was sold by Bud Dunn in 2008."

Helms then explained that the nursery for the flower business was on the original family property on Rice Valley Road, off McFarland Boulevard.

What's more, the former garden center is now "The Gardens" community of homes, while part of the family property is the also current location for Tuscaloosa Academy.

Click here to learn more about our friends at Historic Tuscaloosa and be on the lookout for the next installment of our Memory of the Week.

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