Robert Jemison Jr

Robert Jemison Jr

Robert Jemison Jr (born February 28, 1878 in Tuscaloosa; died 1974) was a real estate developer, president of the Jemison Real Estate & Insurance Company, and founder of Mountain Brook.

Jemison was the son of business executive and real estate developer Robert Jemison Sr, and grandnephew of Tuscaloosa merchant and Confederate Senator Robert Jemison Jr. His family moved to a house in downtown Birmingham in 1884 and Robert Jr attended Powell School and the South Highland Academy. He enrolled at the University of Alabama in 1895, but completed his degree at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

After returning to Birmingham, Jemison began his career as a clerk in a hardware store before beginning a long career in real estate development. He married the former Virginia Earle Walker in 1901 and had three children.

In 1903 Jemison was involved in the committee from the Commercial Club of Birmingham that commissioned the city's Vulcan statue for the 1904 World's Fair from Giuseppe Moretti. In 1907, as chair of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Jemison was involved in commissioning Ethel Armes' history, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama

As an active civic leader, Jemison also served as the first president of the Birmingham Red Cross, and also chaired the Birmingham Community Chest. He personally contributed $25 toward the purchase of the elephant named "Miss Fancy" for the Avondale Park zoo. In 1931 Jemison also donated a breeding pair of swans to the park.

In 1910 Jemison was hired by Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company to plan and develop the new industrial city of Corey (later Fairfield) around its new Fairfield Works blast furnace site.

As president of the Jemison Real Estate Company, Robert Jemison Jr was involved in the development of the Ensley Highlands, Earle Place, and Central Park subdivisions in western Birmingham; the Mountain Terrace, Glen View, Forest Hill, Redmont Park subdivisions on the slope of Red Mountain in Birmingham's Southside; and the Roebuck Springs and Roebuck Terrace subdivisions in East Birmingham, and the Ridgely Apartments and Tutwiler Hotel downtown.

In 1925 Jemison purchased the historic William Reed residence in Roebuck and expanded it into a 500-acre working ranch, which he dubbed Spring Lake Farms. He sold the house and much of the property to Emmett Ware in 1947.

Jemison's most lasting achievement is the planning and development of Mountain Brook, an early automobile suburb designed as a picturesque retreat from the smoke-filled, noisy streets of downtown Birmingham. The development opened in 1929 and was later incorporated as an independent municipality.

In the early 1950s Jemison lent his support to efforts to win federal funding for creation of the University of Alabama Medical Center. Later that decade he chaired the Citizens Committee for Merger which sought to bring Homewood and Mountain Brook into the city of Birmingham.

Jemison was inducted into the Alabama Business Hall of Fame in 1981. He and his father were both inducted into the [Birmingham Business Hall of Fame]] in 2008. Mountain Brook's Jemison Park along Shades Creek is named in his honor.

Jemison's personal and business papers are archived at the Birmingham Public Library Archives, as part of its Birmingham Architecture & Design Collection.

References

• Barefield, Marilyn Davis (1989) A History of Mountain Brook, Alabama and Incidentally of Shades Valley Birmingham: Southern University Press ISBN 0876519907
• Morris, Philip A. and Marjorie Longenecker White, eds. (1989) Designs on Birmingham: A Landscape History of a Southern City and Its Suburbs Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society

External links

• Robert Jemison Jr Collection at bplonline.org

[[Category:Birmingham Business Hall of Fame