November 8, 1950

After the road from the Birmingham Water Works filter plant at the base of Shades Mountain to its top was extended, a few wealthy Birmingham residents began to build estates along it to escape the noise and pollution of the industrial city below. One of them was George Battey Ward. The former Birmingham mayor in 1924 built a home and named it Vestavia because it was modeled after the temple of the Roman goddess Vesta in Rome. After Ward died in 1940, developer Charles Byrd bought the estate and conceived of a planned community of 1,000 homes named Vestavia Hills. Byrd began building homes in 1946 during the housing boom after World War II, and soon the town had an elementary school and several churches. The city was formally incorporated on this day in 1950.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

George B. Ward, published in 1922 in “A History of Rome and Floyd County.” (Wikipedia)

Young women perform a dance at the Temple of Sybil in Vestavia Hills, ca. 1930. The gazebo, which is a replica of the Temple of Sibyl in Tivoli, Italy, was built on the estate of former Birmingham mayor George Battey Ward in 1929. It was moved to its current location at the southern end of Vestavia Hills in 1976 and is owned by the Vestavia Garden Club. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

A sign welcomes drivers to Vestavia Hills, located just south of Birmingham in central Alabama. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photograph by Jimmy Emerson)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.