1453 Smolian Place

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1453 Smolian Place, sometimes called the Mattie Turner residence, is a 4,208 square-foot 4-bedroom, 2½-bath house at 1453 Smolian Place (formerly 28th Street South and Flora Avenue) in the Milner Heights subdivision Birmingham's Redmont Park neighborhood. The front of the house faces the eastern end of Arlington Avenue.

The home was built in 1926 and is recorded as a contributing property to the Red Mountain Suburbs Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

The house was originally clad in textured stucco with simple punched openings. The triple arch on the front porch was supported on two spiral columns and a cornice elaborated the edge of the hipped roof.

No house was shown at 1453 28th Street South in 1925. It did appear in 1926 but was indicated as vacant. Thomas Stobert of Stobert & Naff Realty appears as resident in 1927, but he died in August of that year. His widow, Martha (called Mattie) shared the house with their daughter, Martha Katherine until 1929. On August 14, 1928 a would-be burglar climbed through a side window of the house, but was scared off without taking anything.

In 1930 the home was again vacant, but by 1931 Mattie had married Thomas Wiley Turner (half-brother to architect George Turner) and resumed living in the house. By then Martha had enrolled at Brenau College in Georgia and later married Thomas Paxton Stephens of Coushatta, Louisiana.

In 1936 Mattie rented out a 2-bedroom apartment in the house to Moore-Handley, Inc. clerk Jack Perkins and his new bride, Martha. By 1942 she had resumed using the name Mattie Stobert. In 1949 she moved to Louisiana to live with her daughter and offered the entire house for rent for $125 a month.

Stobert died in March 1954. In April the house was put up for sale with an asking price of $15,000. By October, advertisements claimed that the owner was "leaving town" and "anxious to sell", but the asking price had risen to $15,500. In 1953 it was owned by police officer Harold Pickle. He put it back on the market in February 1956 for $15,750, with rugs, draperies and blinds included.

The house was acquired in the late 1980s by Keith and Lynn Russell. Lynn, a former Town & Gown Theater performer and New York ballerina, employed set decorators and painters in elaborating the details of the house, enclosing the porch and adding mouldings and balustrades on the exterior, as well as hand-painted murals and extensive plaster wall and ceiling ornament on the interior. At the same time the landscaping was upgraded with limestone steps and walls, a wrought iron gate, irrigation and lighting.

Before 2011 terra-cotta tile roofing was installed on the visible portions of the hipped roof, along with new copper gutters and downspouts.

The house was sold for $313,000 in 1997. In March 2023 Lynn Davis of Lynn Russell Realty put on the market with an asking price of $1.05 million, which was dropped to $975,000 in November.

References

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