Purchase Tickets
On July 4, 1936, Walter Bellingrath noted in his guest register that on that day they had their first meal inside their new home. Ninety years later we celebrate that event and look back at the construction of his home.
Architect George B. Rogers selected a 44 year old contractor named Peyton Higgison to handle the job. Higgison had been born in Macon, Ga. but was in Mobile by 1924 when he married Annie McCann. Miss McCann was Choir Director for Dauphin Way Methodist Church of which her father served as pastor. In the mid-1950’s the current church was built and Peyton Higgison served as the general contractor for that project.
The year 1924 was also the first year Higgison was listed in the Mobile city directory where he was listed as a general contractor with an office in the old First National Bank Building. The business apparently did not last because he was listed as an estimator for Sundberg Construction by 1928.
It is not until the 1935 edition that Peyton Higgison is listed again as a general contractor and this would have been the pivotal year when he landed the job at Bellingrath Gardens.
And it was on July 3, 1935 that the architect ok’d the first payment to Peyton Higgison in the amount of $78.28. Within weeks his crew had grown to a pair of carpenters and 12 laborers. By January of 1936 the payroll included laborers, carpenters, brick masons, plasterers, and painters.
And the list of materials used is impressive: 231,850 bricks, 380 barrels of cement and 85,772 board feet of lumber. The cast iron railings were purchased for the sum of $1,105.50. Total labor cost: $14,243.10 or roughly $335,000 today.
While Mr. Higgison’s contracting business got off to a rocky start, his completion of the Bellingrath Home certainly put him on a successful track. He handled the construction of the new Grand Hotel, the disassembling of Trinity Episcopal Church and its reconstruction on Dauphin Street, followed by St. John’s Episcopal Church (1956) the Greek Orthodox Church built beside the Bellingrath Home on Ann Street (1961) and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Spring Hill (1964).
In 1975, Forty years after breaking ground on the Bellingrath Home, Mr. Higgison died at the age of 83 following what was termed a lengthy illness. The buildings and churches he constructed remain a monument to this talented man.