Calhoun County AlArchives News.....MELLON HOME: OXFORD STRUCTURE WAS ONCE THE ONLY TOURIST HOME IN THIS AREA March 4, 1973
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Shirley Dewberry dewberry@cableone.net March 18, 2010, 5:27 pm

Permission to reprint this article given by:
Anthony Cook, Managing Editor, The Anniston Star, Anniston, Alabama
256-235-3558 

The Anniston Star, Anniston, Alabama March 4, 1973
     Metal room numbers above the doors seem out of place now.  The dahlias 
that once drew Sunday drivers are gone.  But Nell Mellon Hubbard remembers 
well the better times in her Victorian home in Oxford.  Mrs. Hubbard moved 
into the house at 315 Choccolocco Street, with her mother, father and eight 
brothers and sisters in 1911.  They were the fourth family to inhab it.

     In the early 1930s she and her sister, Betty, the last of the Mellons 
living there, turned the house into the only tourist home between Anniston and 
Birmingham.  What a place it was.  They featured rooms for rent for single and 
family guest.  No meals were served but the price was right, $1 per night.

     The yard was a local attraction, according to Mrs. Hubbard.  Sightseers 
would come to see the dahlias climbing in the side yard and flowers and trees 
that surrounded the house.  Betty Mellon had complete charge of the yard and 
devoted a great deal of time to it. "She is bedridden from a stroke now and 
can not keep it up any more, but anyone can tell you what a beautiful yard we 
had," Mrs. Hubbard said.

     The Mellon family brought in all their own furnishings for the house and 
the two sisters added several pieces of their own to enchance their tourist 
trade.  A 12-foot mirror hanging in the foyer of the hosue came from an 
antique shop in Birmingham.  According to Mrs. Hubbard, it took eight men to 
carry it form the train depot in Anniston and hang it with the wood braces on 
the wall.  There were find high posted beds and plenty of rocking chairs on 
the side porch for the guest to relax after a day of travel.

     Choccolocco Street, was on the main Birmingham to Atlanta highway then 
and the tourist business was good.  "Especially during the war, we had lots of 
people stay with us because of Ft. McClellan was so close," she said.  They 
didn't have any famous people that she recalls but they had respectable people 
who appreciated a clean comfortable room for the night.

     But the house had a definite flavor even before the Mellon sisters went 
commercial.  It was built as a part of a contest between two brothers during 
the Gay Nineties.  J.T. Moye and his brother both decided to build their homes 
in Oxford.  J.T. chose Choccolocco St., while his brother began his home on 
U.S. 78 where Blue Pond Shopping Center is now.  Each worked to outdo the 
other.

     Not much is known about the other Moye house, but the two story structure 
on the tree lined entrance to downtown Oxford stands today as it did then with 
stained glass windows, porches all around the ornate wood trim.  J.T. Moye 
went broke before he completed the house, as the story goes, and sold his 
dreams to Mrs. Mary E. Hudson (Mary Elizabeth Foster Hudson) January 19, 1893.

     The Hudson family added to the home during the eight years they lived 
there, finishing some of the interior of the house Moye did not complete. One 
of the Hudson boys, Keener, enjoyed the house immensely.  Once he rode a horse 
up the front stairs of the house, but no amount of coaxing could get the horse 
back down.  He finally solved the dilemma by walking him down backwards.

     The house was sold again in 1901 to the George W. Eichelberger family who 
completed the construction.  The finished house featured a Romeo and Juliet 
balcony off a second floor front room, six hugh bedrooms, and numerous nooks 
and crannies scattered throughout.  An elaborate stairway and a great steeple 
made it a classic example of the period.  The Romeo and Juliet balcony and the 
cathedral stairway were put to good use at one point in the history of the 
house when one of the Mellon sisters married there.

     The tourist home closed in 1955 with the mass influx of modern tourist 
courts and motels.  They just can't compete, Mrs. Hubbard said.  The sisters 
live alone now and occasionally rent out upstairs bedrooms.  The house hasn't 
been full for a long time, even when all the Mellons come to visit their aunts.

     Offers to buy the place have come from many persons interested in 
building apartment complexes, Mrs. Hubbard said.  But she and her sister have 
been advised by an Anniston realtor that the property is to valuable to sell 
for that purpose.

     "We have lived in the house all our lives about," she said. "It would be 
such a shame to see comeone come in and tear the house down to put up 20 or 30 
apartments."

     "It has become so much a part of us, I just couldn't stand it."


 









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