A Tale of Two Towns

A Tale of Two Towns. Montgomery, Alabama ~ A City Older Than The State. Following their defeat at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, the Creek Indians ceded millions of acres to the U.S. government. Within the cession, two rival towns soon sprang up on the south bank of the Alabama River's "Big Bend": New Philadelphia (1817) founded by Andrew Dexter and and East Alabama (1818) founded by General John Scott and associates. Although adjacent, the two were laid out on a diagonal to each other. , New Philadelphia, platted on a N-S-E-W grid, had as its main thoroughfare Market Street (now Dexter Avenue) rising gradually from an artesian well at present Court Square toward its eastern terminus, the future site (1846) of the State Capitol. East Alabama, laid out on a NW-SE axis, aligned parallel and perpendicular to the Alabama with its main thoroughfare Main Street (now Commerce Street) extending from the same artesian well northward to the Alabama River. , Six north-south New Philadelphia streets bore the names of naval heroes of the War of 18 12 -- Perry, Lawrence, McDonough, Hull, Decatur and Bainbridge and five east-West streets of the first five presidents: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. , East Alabama's streets preserved indigenous games -- Coosa, Tallapoosa -- and honored early settlers in names like Clayton and Bibb. Eventually realizing that rivalry benefitted no one, the founders acceded to a merger, And on December 3, 1819, the Alabama Legislature incorporated the two pioneer settlements into one town, named Montgomery in honor of Revolutionary War hero Richard Montgomery. , In 1822, the first courthouse was erected just to the west of the artesian well on land that had originally been in East Alabama, but facing east to New Philadelphia.

Monument designed by David Keith Braly. , Based on the 1842 map of Montgomery by Alfred Andrew Dexter.