F. SCOTT AND ZELDA FITZGERALD MUSEUM, THE

Alabama Heritage, Spring 2005 by Newton, Wesley Phillips

THE FITZGERALDS MAY HAVE BEEN CITIZENS OF THE WORED, BUT THE ONEY MUSEUM DEDICATED TO THEIR MEMORY IS IN MONTGOMERY. BY WESLEY PHILEIPS NEWTON

IN OCTOBER 1931 SCOlTANDZELDA Fitzgerald, with their nine year-old daughter Scottie, took a six-month lease on a two-story brown clapboard house at 819 Felder Street in the prestigious Montgomery suburb of Cloverdale. The neighborhood eagerly welcomed the internationally famous couple.

The Fitzgeralds had already lived in New York, Paris, and Hollywood. In Montgomery they resolved to give up the wild lifestyle and drinking that had contributed to their marital and social problems. Each also determined to work on the respective novels they had planned to write. For Scott it was Tender is the Night; for Zelda it would be her first, Save Me the Waltz.

The first month at the house on Felder proved a happy one as they visited with old friends, played tennis, and sampled what recreation the city presented. Then Scott wrote in his journal, "Life dull." When a Hollywood studio offered Scott a chance to go to California to work on a movie script, he went, against Zelda's wishes.

Scott returned to Montgomery and joined his family for the Christmas of 1931, but shortly afterwards Zelda had to be sent to Baltimore to be hospitalized for a recurrence of her mental problems. Scottie finished out the school year in Alabama, living with her grandmother. In May she went to Baltimore to meet her father. As soon as Zelda finished her treatment, they were all reunited, but the Fitzgeralds never returned to 819 Felder.

In 1938 the house was divided into apartments. It remained so for decades. In time residents of Cloverdale, which had become a revered part of the city, challenged any attempt to change its appearance. In the 1980s Julian L. McPhillips Jr., one of the state's most well-known trial lawyers, and his wife Leslie lived two houses away from the house where Scott, Zelda, and Scottie had resided-now renumbered as 919. Their neighbor Bob Bogard, a Ph.D. in English, informed Julian and Leslie of the literary and historical significance of the house.

In 1986 the house was threatened with demolition to make way for new condominiums. Realtor Martha Cassels warned the McPhillipses about the plan, and the couple decided to buy the property before developers had a chance to tear it down. Quietly they began to plan and create a Fitzgerald museum at the house.

Coincidentally, Scottie Fitzgerald had moved to Montgomery in the early 1970s. Julian McPhillips asked her to take part in the creation of a museum to honor her parents, but she replied that, while she did not oppose a Fitzgerald museum at 919 Felder, she felt she should not be a part of its creation. Scottie died soon afterwards of cancer. McPhillips became president and Leslie vice-president of the nonprofit Fitzgerald Museum Association. Its original board of directors included the Bogards, Martha Gassels, Dr. Rick Anderson (Huntingdon College's Fitzgerald scholar), civil rights icon Virginia Durr (who had known Zelda as a young woman), and Zelda's great niece Sayre Godwin of Montgomery.

A two-fold opposition to the museum arose once the planning became public knowledge. Some Cloverdale residents feared that an increase in traffic would block nearby streets and commercialize the neighborhood. Another group of locals felt that the Fitzgeralds' Montgomery experience "belonged" only to them; Virginia Durr labeled this group as false "keepers of the flame."

In 1989 neighborhood opposition led the City Board of Adjustment by a 3-to-2 vote to deny the museum a variance. Julian asked his personal lawyer to file suit in a state circuit court, and together they were able to negotiate a successful compromise with residents who opposed the museum. With no governmental assistance, the museum has depended on private contributions, especially from the McPhillipses.

Local author and member of the Fitzgerald Museum Board Wayne Greenhaw, in his research for a play about the Fitzgeralds' time on Felder Avenue, put his finger on one of the unique qualities of their presence in Montgomery: their brief abode there would be the last time they would live together happily as a married couple. Though they never legally divorced, Scott and Zelda's tragedies of alcoholism and mental illness and their disagreement over Zelda's desire for a creative identity drove them to live apart once Scott left Alabama for Hollywood.

The museum houses many artifacts from Scott and Zelda's life including photographs, original letters, various editions of Scott's novels, prints of Zelda's art and some originals, and several pieces of furniture from her childhood home, which was torn down. The museum opened to the public in May 1989. Since that time it has drawn thousands of visitors representing every state and many foreign countries. Just as the Fitzgeralds were citi/ens of the world, and not just of Montgomery, so should the museum belong to all people, not just the local community. It seems fitting that the only museum in the world dedicated to the memory of these two icons is located in Zelda's birthplace, where she and Scott first met.