Harper Lee’s Hometown
Posted on August 31, 2015 by bob in Travel
Monroeville Courthouse
by Andrea Gross; photos by Irv Green
Monroeville, Alabama may be the most well-known small town in America. Millions of folks have read about it, seen a movie about it, and picture it as the archetypical Southern town, but comparatively few recognize its name. To them it is Maycomb, the place memorably depicted in one of the world’s best selling books, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as in her recently-released novel, Go Set a Watchman.
Statue depicting characters from the book and film, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Despite having similar themes (racial attitudes, moral certitude and family relationships) and featuring many of the same characters, there are important differences between the two books. Mockingbird takes place in the 1930s while Watchman is set in the 1950s. The intervening twenty years have wrought changes in everything from political actions to societal expectations, and the story is told from the perspective of an informed adult rather than an innocent child. But one thing remains the same: in a physical sense the fictional town of Maycomb is strikingly similar to the real town of Monroeville.
Today Monroeville is almost twice as large as it was sixty years ago when Lee wrote both of her books (Watchman was actually an early draft of Mockingbird), but with a population of just over 6,000, it’s still not much more than an outpost midway between Montgomery and Mobile. Yet due to Lee, who has always called it home, and Truman Capote, who vacationed there as a child, the state legislature dubbed the town the Literary Capital of Alabama in 1997. Twelve years later the 40-acre downtown area was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
My husband and I are eager to see what all the fuss is about. We stop first at the 1903 domed courthouse, a familiar structure to those who have seen the 1962 film of Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck or read the early works of Capote. We enter the courtroom where Lee’s father, as well as the fictional Atticus Finch, practiced law. I shudder as I see the jury box where twelve white men convicted an innocent black in a pivotal scene in Mockingbird.
The upstairs rooms are filled with exhibits pertaining to the town’s famous duo. We read about Lee receiving the 1961 Pulitzer Prize, admire photos of Capote as a chubby-cheeked child, and pause before a giant enlargement of a postage stamp featuring Gregory Peck. I find it strange that the postal service honored a movie star who recreated a character on screen rather than the author who created that character in the first place.
But the real importance of Monroeville, as well as the museum, is best represented by a bronze sculpture on the courthouse lawn that depicts three children absorbed by a book. The sculpture is titled “A Celebration of Reading.”
As we stroll the surrounding streets we try to imagine the town as it was when Lee was a child. Her home was only two blocks from the Courthouse; the Faulk home in which Capote summered was right next door to Lee’s and the home of Alfred Boulware, who Mockingbird fans will recognize as the likely inspiration for Boo, was around the corner near the elementary school.
These homes are gone now. An overpriced ice cream shack occupies the site of Lee’s home, a rock wall is all that’s left of the
All that remains of Truman Capote’s Monroeville home.
former Faulk house, and the Boulware home has been replaced by a gas station. Many of the old buildings remain, although most have been repurposed. Circling back to the Courthouse, we pass the Monroe County Bank, where Lee’s father had his law office, and the RSVP building that now houses a charitable organization but used to be the town jail. Finally, behind the courthouse, the former La Salle Hotel, where Gregory Peck stayed when he was in town preparing for his award-winning role as Atticus, has been turned into the public library.
Then, because travel is as much about meeting people as seeing sights, we go to Radley’s Fountain Grille, where 92-year-old George Jones enjoys talking to visitors about days gone by.
“Nelle was four years behind me in school,” he says, referring to Lee by her first name, the one used by long time acquaintances. “She was a notorious tomboy, just like Scout (the main character in Mockingbird) and Capote was just like Scout’s friend Dill, who was a smart-alecky kid with a high-pitched voice.”
Before we leave, we visit Ol’ Curiosities & Book Shoppe, where we buy a copy of Go Set a Watchman. It’s been embossed and certified as coming from the author’s hometown — the Maycomb of Scout and and the Monroeville of Nelle.
For more information about travel writer/photo-journalists Andrea Gross and Irv Green and the places they have visited and written about, visit www.TraveltizersPlus.com.
