College Park Home & Garden Tour This Weekend

College Park, the home of female education in 19th century Tuscaloosa, will be the site of fun, food and live music as well as home and garden tours on Saturday, May 16 from 4pm to 8pm.

The Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society chose College Park as one of it’s four 2015 Heritage Celebration sites because of the unique history of the area.

“Before the neighborhood was developed it went through a number of transitions. Where our homes now stand, off Queen City Ave. at 6th Street, in the early 1800s, stood the Tuscaloosa Female Athenaeum, a girls school begun by the Baptist Church. One of it biggest supporters was Dr. Alva Woods, 1st President of the University of Alabama,” according to Claire Friday, President of the Preservation Society.

Dr. Woods is only one of locally well-known names that are connected to the history of the site and the Athenaeum is only one of the institutions that existed there through the years from 1836 to 1926. By the time the schools doors closed in 1896 it had become the Methodist Tuscaloosa Female College. The building then served as a boarding house for boys and briefly as a hotel.. Early in the 1920s a group of local men purchased the land with it’s deteriorating building and created what has become a unique neighborhood, a rural feeling oasis in the midst of a growing urban area.

On Saturday visitors will be able to visit some of the homes and gardens that were developed in College Park during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.The homes range from English Tudor to Colonial Revival.  One of the houses is built directly over the actual site of the Tuscaloosa Female College.

“We hope lots of people will come out and visit us on the 18th. We are a small neighborhood with a big history. We hope to share it.. We will have wonderful food and terrific music!’, Friday added.

Tickets for the  College Park Home & Garden Tours Block Party  are $25 for adults, $10 young people 6years to 18 years, and free for children 5 and under. For more information or to purchase tickets please call the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society at 758-2238 or 758-2906 or visit historictuscloosa.org. Tickets will also be available at the event.