In its early days, Anniston nestled neatly between soft hills on its east side and a bed of mineral deposits and ore on the west. It was a company town, with company employees as its majority residents and company owners as its overseers.

Its heart — Noble Street — was named for founder Samuel Noble and was home to a range of businesses and the young town’s cultural center, its opera house. Also downtown, Anniston’s first City Hall — a reddish-brown building with a spire — would eventually give way and become the site for today’s Anniston Police Department.

Noble and his mentor, Gen. Daniel Tyler, believed the “model city” should be laid out neatly, with easy access to churches, industry and stores. Among the early, more prominent houses of worship were Grace Episcopal Church and the First Presbyterian Church.

The city’s founders integrated Anniston as a company town into the landscape. On the north end of town, near where Wendy’s is now on Quintard Avenue, was the company farm. On the south end, cottages and houses for workers whose labor powered the pipe shops and foundries.

Sources: Jay Jenkins of Jenkins Munroe Jenkins Architecture, Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County, Images of America: Anniston by Kimberly O'Dell