Decatur Mall

Austinville is a former town and now a neighborhood within the city of Decatur in Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is about 3 miles south from downtown Decatur, centered on the junction of Danville Road and Carridale Street. It was incorporated as a town in 1907 and disincorporated and annexed into the city of Decatur in 1956.

WBHP (800 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Decatur, Alabama, with studios in Madison, Alabama. WHOS is part of the group of stations in the Huntsville radio market owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The station is simulcast on an FM translator at 106.5 MHz in Huntsville, and on the second HD Radio channel of WDRM (102.1 FM). WBHP broadcasts a talk radio format and serves northwest Alabama and south-central Tennessee. By day, the station is powered at 1,000 watts. As 800 AM is a Mexican clear channel frequency, WBHP reduces power at night to 215 watts to prevent interference. The transmitter is off 2nd Street SW at 14th Avenue SW in Decatur.

Austin High School is located in Decatur, Alabama, United States. It is part of the Decatur City Schools system and enrolls over 1,400 students. Since its establishment in 1962, Austin has been one of two high schools in the Decatur area. It boasts a variety of programs.AHS was erected in order to relieve overcrowding at Decatur High School, located in the southeastern part of town. Decatur underwent a massive growth in population in the 20 or so years after World War II due to the rapid development of manufacturing plants and jobs, along with support businesses, usually entailing, as elsewhere, young families. Originally, as was the custom of the time in Decatur and all of Alabama, Austin was a segregated school, for white youth only. When the city chose to shut down the historic all-black Lakeside School in response to Federal demands that Alabama desegregate its public schools in 1969, AHS received the preponderance of African-American youth from Lakeside. This was because of local residential patterns, enforced by municipal codes and local custom. Then, almost all of the city's black population resided west of the Lousville and Nashville Railroad, which then bisected Decatur's high school districts. Since Austin was located in the western half, it received almost all of the adolescents residing in the traditionally-segregated portions of the city. In 2018, the school system, in a massive realignment of school districting due to population shifts within the city away from the central parts of Decatur, opened a new AHS campus on Modaus Road several miles outside the Alabama Highway 67 bypass (locally known as the "Beltline"), replacing the original location on Danville Road Southwest. With that construction came the first new high school football stadium in the city in decades, meaning that Austin no longer has to share Ogle Stadium, located next to Decatur High School, with DHS, as had been the case since Austin's beginnings, since the city chose not to build a stadium with the original 1960s construction. The former Austin High campus was redesignated for use by younger pupils and is now named Austin Junior High School; AJHS replaced the closed Brookhaven Middle School, an institution that served a predominantly minority population and had been academically failing for years. At the same time, despite potential identity confusion, Cedar Ridge Middle School, built in the 1990s to address overcrowding then at the former Brookhaven Middle, was renamed by DCS as Austin Middle School. Cedar Ridge/Austin Middle is located close to the present Austin High, outside the Beltline and, along with AJHS, feeds students to the high school. A similar shuffling of facilities occurred on the city's eastern side at the same time, also due to construction of a new high school.

The Cotaco Opera House, also known as Masonic Building, was the first opera house constructed in the state of Alabama. It is located at 115 Johnston Street in historic downtown Decatur, Alabama. In 1889, the city of Decatur was the largest city in North Alabama, out-sizing Huntsville. It had become increasingly apparent that the city was in need of a theater to showcase its fine arts. The Opera House was built on a 100 by 140 foot site that ran south from Johnston Street and fronting on the east side of 1st Avenue. It was built by the Cotaco Opera House Company, which was incorporated on September 16, 1889.

The New Decatur–Albany Historic District is a historic district in Decatur, Alabama. The district encompasses the commercial district of the former town of New Decatur (briefly renamed Albany). It lies south of the Bank Street-Old Decatur Historic District and east of the New Decatur–Albany Residential Historic District. New Decatur was founded in 1887 as a planned town and suburb of Decatur. The town was renamed Albany in 1916 and merged with "Old" Decatur in 1927. The district contains 48 buildings centered on 2nd Avenue. Buildings from the late 19th century exhibit more decorated styles, including examples of Romanesque Revival, Victorian, and Renaissance Revival architecture. Early 20th century structures are more restrained, with decoration coming from the building's materials rather than being applied. A few Art Deco and Streamline Moderne buildings dating from the 1920s to 1940s also appear in the district. Notable contributing properties include the Princess Theatre, an Art Deco cinema-turned-theater, and the Cotaco Opera House, built in 1890.The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. The Decatur Light, Power, and Fuel Company complex was added to the district in 1999, but subsequently demolished.

The Princess Theatre is a 677-seat performing arts venue in Decatur, Alabama. The art deco-style building was originally built in 1887 as a livery stable. In 1919, the building was transformed into a silent film and vaudeville playhouse. In 1941 the Princess received its art deco redesign. A bright neon marque which displays the name was installed around the same time. Local architect Albert Frahn painted the interior in burgundy and gray, with glow-in-the-dark murals. Outside the doors, the floor is paved with terrazzo in a map of Alabama, that marks the Tennessee River and City of Decatur. In 1978, the city of Decatur purchased The Princess after it closed as a movie house. The city gave the theatre a $750,000 renovation, and the stage was again open as the premier performing arts venue for the Decatur area. The building was listed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 1981.

Decatur (dɪˈkeɪtə(r)) is the largest city and county seat of Morgan County (with a portion also in Limestone County) in the U.S. state of Alabama. Nicknamed "The River City", it is located in northern Alabama on the banks of Wheeler Lake, along the Tennessee River. The population in 2020 was 57,938.Decatur is the core city of the two-county large Decatur metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 156,494 in 2020. Combined with the Huntsville Metropolitan Area, the two create the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area, of which Decatur is the second-largest city. Like many southern cities in the early 19th century, Decatur's early success was based upon its location along a river. Railroad routes and boating traffic pushed the city to the front of North Alabama's economic atmosphere. The city rapidly grew into a large economic center within the Tennessee Valley and was a hub for travelers and cargo between Nashville and Mobile, as well as Chattanooga and New Orleans. Throughout the 20th century, the city experienced steady growth, but was eclipsed as the regional economic center by the fast-growing Huntsville during the space race. Decatur now finds its economy heavily based on manufacturing, mining, cargo transit, chemical, and high-tech companies such as Vulcan Materials, Daikin, Toray, and United Launch Alliance.

Albany, Alabama, also known as New Decatur, Alabama, was a city in Morgan County, Alabama, United States, situated immediately to the southeast of the city of Decatur near the Tennessee River. New Decatur/Albany existed as a city from 1887 until 1927, when it merged with the city of Decatur. Today, it exists as a neighborhood within the city of Decatur, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Delano Park, operated by the Decatur Parks and Recreation Board, is the oldest park in the city of Decatur, Alabama. It was created in 1887, as part of a master plan to "re-invent" the City of Decatur, then New Decatur. The city created the "Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company" for this specific purpose. The company employed a landscape architect by the name of Nathan Franklin Barrett to design a whole new city that had been ravaged by a yellow fever epidemic and the Civil War. The park was designed to be the focal point of the entire plan. The park, named after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mother, was dedicated in the 1930s by Roosevelt himself and later named in her honor as part of a newspaper contest, which sought to commemorate his vision for municipal parks across America. The land was donated to the city of Albany as part of the New Deal, which included a large plan to develop the poverty-ridden city. The park remained mostly a solitary attraction on the fringe of downtown as the only large park in town during that era. This changed in the mid-1950s when the new Decatur High School constructed a new school building to replace an overcrowding "Riverside" High School building. The far eastern end once consisted of a swimming pool called the "Blue Haven". This pool has since been filled in, and the Decatur High marching band now uses a practice field that was created over the former swimming area. The middle portion of the park contains a children's playground, the new "Splash Pad", and a ditch with a concrete bridge donated to the park. The bridge was moved in the 1930s from Ferry Street to accentuate the beauty of the park and has been a favorite location for young and old alike ever since.

The Bank Street–Old Decatur Historic District is a historic district in Decatur, Alabama. The district encompasses the original commercial and residential portion of Decatur along the Tennessee River. In 1832, Decatur was selected over the larger Huntsville as the site of the northern branch of the state bank. Bank Street became the commercial hub of the town, as it was the only place in the Tennessee Valley were riverboat, wagon, and rail transportation converged. Due to its strategic location, the town suffered heavy damage in the Civil War; the Todd House on Lafayette Street is one of only four buildings in Decatur to survive the war (the others being the Old State Bank, the Rhea-McEntire House, and the Dancy-Polk House, all outside the district). As the town was rebuilding from the war, a fire in 1877 destroyed most of the buildings along Bank Street. The rebuilt structures were all of brick, and represent Italianate, Victorian, and Commercial styles popular from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. Houses in the district are primarily modest, and styles include vernacular Victorian, Shingle-style, and Craftsman bungalows.The portion along Bank Street was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, while the remainder, including all of the residential portion, was added to the district in 1985.

The Southern Railway Depot is a historic building in Decatur, Alabama. The depot was built in 1904–05 along the Southern Railway line. Decatur had become a transportation hub of North Alabama by the 1870s, with its connections to the Tennessee River, the east–west Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur Railroad (later operated by the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and the Southern Railway), and the north–south Louisville and Nashville Railroad. The Southern's last train through the city was the Tennessean (Memphis-Washington, D.C., discontinued, 1968). The last train by the L&N, and the train with the last route going south toward Alabama's largest cities, was the Pan-American, (Cincinnati-New Orleans) which ended in 1971. Other L&N trains passing through were the Azalean (Cincinnati-New Orleans) and the Humming Bird (Cincinnati-New Orleans). The depot last functioned as a passenger station in 1979, when Amtrak cancelled its (Chicago-St. Petersburg / Miami) Floridian service. The station is built of brick painted white, with quoins on the corners. The building has a rectangular central section with narrower wings stretching along the tracks. The central section has a hipped roof, while the wings have gable roofs; both have deep eaves with decorative brackets. The main entrance is covered by a porte-cochère with arched openings. The depot was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

The West Old Town Historic District, in or near Decatur, Alabama, is a historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.It includes NW Alma Street to NW Vine Street. It included 42 contributing buildings and a contributing site on 31 acres (13 ha).It includes Modern Movement and Bungalow/craftsman architecture.