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Since the 1820s, Bienville Square has been a central point in Mobile. The downtown park is named for one of the two founders of the city, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, who served for a time as the governor of French Louisiana when Mobile was its capital in the early 1700s.

This time, I’m doing something a little different. I’m placing the Historic Mobile Preservation Society images (used with permission–see below) beside photos taken by me in November 2024. The first pairing shows the St. Joseph Street (east) side of the park. You can just make out the bandstand behind the second buggy in the historic photo. Hotel Bienville is the tall building just beyond the corner of the park, and right beside it, to the left is the Athelstan Club, which was discussed last time. Neither of those structures survived modern “progress.”

During the Progressive Era, the bandstand was often used for political speeches as well as musical performances, and the park itself was a gathering place for friends, parade viewing, and a green space for children and their parents or nursemaids to enjoy the beauty of the fountain or feed peanuts to the playful squirrels. From The Possession Chronicles—my first Southern Gothic family saga series—there are notable scenes in Bienville Square in Perilous Confessions (friends and lovers, with and without squirrels), Scarred Memories (children with parents and the help plus squirrels), and Barren Devotion (parade viewing.) In Severed Legacies, the final book in The Malevolent Trilogy, there is a political speech given from the bandstand by a character who is running for judge. Yep, it’s Sean Spunner again, who is getting his own post next time featuring some of the real houses this fictional character lived in.

Surrounded by offices, hotels, shops, and the Athelstan Club today’s neighboring streets are a mix of the glories of historic architecture and shames of the often-neglectful past as Mobile looks ahead after more than three hundred years of settlement. Many buildings have been lost, but new ones stand where the ghosts of the previous decades reside.

The western edge of the park no longer has streetcar tracks (or horse droppings in the road) but there is a hotel at the St. Francis Street corner once again. Finished in 1906, the year after the devastating Battle House fire previously mentioned, the Cawthon Hotel stood six-stories high. The above photo is from sometime 1908 or later as it has the completed seventh floor restaurant which large windows offered a birds-eye view of Bienville Square. The Cawthon Hotel and seventh floor Vineyard Café are featured or mentioned a few times in Severed Legacies and Loyalty: Washington Square Secrets 3 (both during post-WWI years), plus has a heavy presence in Alliance: Washington Square Secrets 2, which is set during the winter of 1912-13. The Cawthon closed in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until this century that another hotel—with a larger footprint—was built. The new photo shows the Hilton Garden Inn.

The Dauphin Street/southern edge of Bienville Square looks the most like its Progressive Era counterpart with matching tree lines and row of business fronts, most of which still retain their classic iron lace balconies. It’s on this block that the fictional Finnigan and Spunner Law Firm was housed—directly across the square from the Athelstan Club. The election night scene in Severed Legacies, with the action between the runners across those two locations, was a joy to write. Thanks to photographical records likes these shown here, it is easy to picture what it might have been like to roam the park more than a hundred years ago.

Bienville Square recently underwent refurbishment from the fountain to sidewalks to tree trimming. The park reopened in April 2024. I miss the iron lace fencing around the fountain. That touch of bygone days lent an air of charm and elegance that modern spaces often lack. My hope is that the fencing was saved (not sold or given away) and will be reinstalled in another public space for Mobilians to enjoy. If you know the fate of it, please let me know.

Do you have any favorite stories, real or fictional, from Bienville Square? Or a favorite building around the square or a spot in the park?

This blog series is made possible through a partnership with Historic Mobile Preservation Society (HMPS.) HMPS’s archive collection, housed on the Oakleigh Complex in the Minnie Mitchell Archives building, is a treasure of inspiration and knowledge. Please support HMPS’s efforts in preserving not only the rich architectural legacy of our city, but the documents, literature, photographs, and more that tell Mobile’s colorful history. The historic photos in this post are used with the permission of Historic Mobile Preservation Society for the purpose of education and enlightenment in the “Fragments Observed: Life During Mobile’s Progressive Era” blog series.
For more information about HMPS and their mission, please visit:
https://www.historicmobile.org/

And for their online archives, including requests to use photographs from their collection:
https://historicmobile.catalogaccess.com/home