Employers Insurance Companies
The Employers Insurance Companies were a group of insurers founded in 1921 by William Hoover. It was incorporated as Employers Mutual Insurance Company of Alabama at a meeting at the Tutwiler Hotel on October 23, 1922 with W. H. Stockham, F. M. Thompson and W. Earle Drennen. Hoover was elected vice president and general manager. It began operating on December 2 of that year and kept offices in the Brown Marx Building.
In 1929 the company transitioned from a mutual company into a stock company, as the Employers Insurance Company of Alabama. William Hoover's brothers, Daniel and George, joined the company in the 1930s. An associated Employers Life Insurance Company was founded in 1944.
In 1957, Hoover broke ground on a new headquarters office on land he had purchased on Montgomery Highway (U.S. Highway 31) south of Vestavia, which he hoped to develop into a new suburban community of "Hooverville", which became known as Hoover. That building, on what is now Braddock Road, became the anchor of the Hoover Court shopping center.