The Roomers of East Clinton Street

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

My family moved into the large two-story house at 505 East Clinton Street in 1953 when I was seven.  We rented it from a landlord that I remember only as Mr. Nickelson, to whom we paid $65 monthly rent. I started going to East Clinton Elementary School in the second grade, and did the seventh and eighth grades at Huntsville Junior High before I moved and attended Lee for the ninth grade. Before attending Lee, I walked to school every day, and it was uphill a little. 

Over the years there have been many articles detailing the rapid, almost boomtown, population growth of Huntsville generated by the influx of personnel being sent to Redstone Arsenal to work on rockets and missiles.  According to the Historical Atlas of Alabama Volume 1, Historical Locations by County, the population of Huntsville in 1940 was 13,050 people. The next ten years saw a growth of only 3,387 making the 1950 population 16,437. The following ten years, between 1950 and 1960 saw Huntsville’s population grow to 72,365, a massive population growth of over 400%.

It is hard to imagine that type of growth today.  That population figure represented the addition of 55,928 new people to a small Alabama city that had only contained a total of 16,437 people just ten years earlier.   Many of the new residents had been sent to Redstone Arsenal to work and to Huntsville to live, and were initially sent without their families. Their arrival probably resembled the unaccompanied American servicemen that were stationed in England to await the European invasion. Thousands of them were sent to the small Southern town on some type of temporary employment for three to six months or were sent to try to find accommodations for their families that would follow at a later time.  

There were not enough living facilities on the Redstone complex to accommodate all these employees. In 1955 Huntsville had three hotels downtown: the Russell Erskine, the Twickenham, and the Yarborough, and 14 motor courts scattered near the small two-lane main highways that led into Huntsville. According to the 1955 Huntsville Sesquicentennial Album, Huntsville offered 330 hotel rooms and 300 motel rooms. Those facilities could house a small percentage of the pilgrims, but in general the city was ill-prepared to accommodate the number of workers that were pouring into the area almost daily. Figures also show there were 630 rooms in private homes in 1955. While it is unknown exactly where all the workers came from, to most of the Huntsville residents, if they came from anywhere north of Fayetteville, Tennessee, they were considered Yankees.

During the Civil War, when the Federal troops occupied Huntsville, housing them was no problem.  The Union commanders simply took over the houses they needed and moved their troops in.  This second Yankee invasion was not so easy for them, and the citizens of Huntsville were better prepared to deal with it.

The answer to housing the population growth was not seen as a problem, but as an opportunity for many Huntsvillians, including my family.  With a little rearranging of our own possessions, we were able to move my brother and myself from our rooms upstairs into the rooms occupied by my mother and grandmother downstairs. This move opened up the upstairs for the group of people that became referred to as “roomers” by the residents of East Clinton Street.

Since my grandmother now worked full time each night at the Rebel Inn there was no way we could cook big meals so we could not offer “Room and Board”, we simply had rooms.  A small hand written cardboard sign was stuck in the front window advertising “Room For Rent.” Similar signs went into the windows of the Drakes who lived next door at the newly designated house number of 508, as well as in the window of Mrs. Louise Crabtree and her mother Mrs. Butler down at 506. The Beaugards next door followed suit. I cannot be sure but I believe that the Drummonds, several houses down also rented rooms, as well as several of the families who owned the houses across the street.  In no time at all, Yankees from the north inhabited the homes of the street.  One major draw for the Clinton Street area was that it was only a short walk downtown to where several cafes were located and where the roomers could eat their meals and go to movie shows to help them occupy their evenings. 

At first we had two beds in each of the upstairs rooms that allowed us to take in four roomers.  Our rate for the rooms was $10 a week for each person. Later, one smooth talking carpetbagger talked my grandmother into letting him have the whole front room as a private room for which he paid $15 each week.  It took away the necessity of cleaning one pair of sheets and washing one less set of towels each week, so I guess there was a mutual advantage for her as well.  The room in the front of the house was reconfigured to contain a double bed, but the occupant had to walk through the twin-bed room to get to the stairs or the bathroom.  The bathroom contained a claw foot bathtub, a toilet and a freestanding sink.  It also had a small gas heater that kept the room warm. It was never designed to accommodate three men trying to get ready to go to work at the same time each morning.

Of course we didn’t lock the front door back then.  We didn’t have a curfew and our roomers came and went as they pleased. The long driveway easily accommodated their cars if they had them. Telephone calls were rare since the cost of long-distance calls was still very expensive and the calls were difficult to complete. I do not remember mail being delivered to the houses for the roomers.  Perhaps they got their mail at a post office box or at work.

Eventually the Huntsville housing market must have finally caught up with the demand and the need for people to find spare rooms in which to temporarily live diminished. By the time 1960 came around, we could no longer depend on the income from renting the rooms and we had to move away from the big white house on Clinton and find something more affordable.  I believe that other houses in the neighborhood might have lasted a little longer in their efforts, but not much longer. 

As far as the houses go, most of them are not only still standing but have been restored and are now a part of the Old Town District.  Their age and heritage are documented now with small signs stuck in their front yards that read like a champion’s pedigree.  These grand houses are now the homes to many new families that are probably unaware of the colorful history of the men twho lived in them for short periods of time and were known as the roomers of Clinton Street.

The Wayback Machine

This Ole House

Just a tune about houses.

Apparently the idea of writing about your first date is not something people want to share. It's a shame really. It would be interested in hearing what movie you saw on your first movie date, or what band was playing when you went to your first dance. I hate to think that no one can remember those events, but maybe we are getting too old to remember.

On a different subject, I know the location of our house on East Clinton gave our roomers an easy walk to town where they could find a place to eat. I would be interested in hearing if any of you also rented out rooms to the people who came to Huntsville to work on Redstone Arsenal.

LEE LUNCH BUNCH

Classes of ’64, ’65, ‘66

Thursday, April 24, 2025 11:00 a.m.

Carrabbas’s Italian Grill

(Upper parking deck at Parkway Place Mall)

Classmates from ‘64, ’65, and ’66, please mark your calendars for the next Lee Lunch Bunch. This begins the 15th year of our lunches together. This is also the 60th year from graduation for the Class of 1965. Hopefully, many of this group will be able to come on this date, share all of the latest from our daily lives, and have a good meal together.

Please do let me know if you are planning to come. I will need to let the manager know how many no later than a couple of days before. Thanks and hope to see you in April.

Patsy Hughes Oldroyd ‘65

304 Wellington Rd.

Athens, AL 35613

H (256) 232-7583

C (256) 432-3396

keithandpatsy@att.net

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