Lakeshore Drive

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Lakeshore Drive is an approximately 2-1/4 mile, northeast-southwest road in southern Homewood paralleling the path of Shades Creek from Green Springs Highway to Independence Drive. It is four lanes for its entire length, with a large median between the east- and west-bound lanes. The road continues to the west as Lakeshore Parkway and to the east as Shades Creek Parkway. The entire length of Lakeshore is also part of Alabama State Highway 149.

Lakeshore Drive was created by the Birmingham Motor and Country Club in the 1910s as part of the park surrounding Edgewood Lake, hence the road's name. The Club had planned to build a "motor speedway" around the lake. The speedway was never completed, but the north and south runs were graded, eventually becoming Lakeshore and South Lakeshore Drives. In the beginning, it was a two-lane, country road as popular with those riding horseback as those in automobiles.

Originally, the boundary between the names Lakeshore Drive and Shades Creek Parkway was where Montgomery Highway crossed the road. When Montgomery Highway (now Independence Drive) was rerouted in the early 1940s about 1,500 feet to the east, so was the point at which the road changed names.

Notable locations

• Green Springs Highway/Columbiana Road intersection (continues west as Lakeshore Parkway)
  • 800: Samford University
• University Park East intersection (John Zimmerman IV Bridge)
  • 2100: Southern Progress corporate headquarters
  • former site of Camp #5 for convicts doing road work (1925–1931?)
• Old Montgomery Highway intersection
  • 2200: Union State Bank
  • 2204: Lakeshore Park Plaza (includes offices of DAXKO and Stockham & Stockham)
  • 2209: First Baptist Church of Birmingham
• Independence Drive intersection (R. H. "Bob" Wharton Bridge; continues east as Shades Creek Parkway)

References

• Summe, Sheryl Spradling. (2001). Homewood: The Life of a City. Homewood, AL: Friends of the Homewood Public Library.