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Tours of LODA

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Tours of LODA is here to show you everything Lower Daphin (LODA) in Mobile, AL has to offer! Send us message to schedule a tour!

Our tour covers everything from 300 years of Mobile history fr building architecture to where to find the best resturant!

10/18/2026

For much of its early history, Mobile's downtown skyline barely reached above the tree tops of the oak trees in Bienville Square. These buildings were brick and timber framed buildings, rarely getting taller than 3 or 4 stories. However, in the early 20th century, steel framed construction reached Mobile and the city started growing up as well out....and it hasn't stopped getting taller!

The majority of Mobile's tallest buildings are located downtown within a few blocks of each other. You can see the growth of Mobile's tallest buildings with a quick stroll down Dauphin Street!

For the last half of the 19th century, the tallest building in Mobile was the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. The sanctuary was 60 ft, when it was completed and consecrated in 1850 . The towers were completed in the 1880s, bringing the height to 103 ft.

The "skyscraper" was developed in the 1880s in Chicago and New York. It wasnt until 1907 that Mobile (and Alabama) got its first sky scraper, the Van Antwerp Building (120 ft)! It is one of the best examples of Beaux Art architecture along the Gulf Coast!

With the economic growth of the 1920s, the Merchants National Bank decided they needed a grand building to house their clients, employees ans offices. Known today as Regions Bank Building today, this 18-story, 236 ft Art Deco building became Mobiles tallest building in 1929.

In 1965, the First National Bank demolished its original building (as well as the 1853 US Customs House) to build its International-style 424 ft, 34 floor building, then the tallest building in Mobile and Alabama. Today, it is the RSA Trustmark, and is the building fro which the Moon Pie is dropped at New Years Eve!

With the RSA Trustmark Building, Mobile held the title for "Tallest Building in Alabama" until 1985, when taller buildings were built in Birmingham. However, in 2007, Mobile regained the title with the construction of the RSA Battlehouse Tower! This postmodern architectural wonder stands 745 ft above the ground, with 35 floors. The building has over 530,000 sqft of usable space!

If you stand in the northwest corner of Bienville Square facing east, you can see the Van Antwerp, Regions Bank Building, Trustmark Building, an the RSA Tower without moving your feet!

Interestingly, in the middle of all these former "Mobile's tallest building" is the Warerman Building. Built in 1947 by the Waterman Steamship Corporation, this building is right beside the Regions Bank Building. This building is 230 ft tall, just 6 ft shorter than its neighbor! If they had put a 7 ft tall spire on top of the Waterman Building, it would have been the tallest building in Mobile!

If you want to see all of these buildings in person, send Tours of LODA a mesage to scheule a tour! The tour goes by these and so many other buildings...including Alabama's tallest hotel!

10/01/2026

On October 27th, 1913, 28th President Woodrow Wilson had breakfast at the Battle House Hotel and traveled by motorcade thru downtown Mobile. Before his tour of the city could really get going, he stopped at the Lyric Theater to address the Southern Commercial Congress, an early-20th century organization dedicated to the economic and commercial growth and agricultural development of the American South. In this speech, he said "I want to take this occasion to say that the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest."

This speech became the cornerstone to his foreign policy, especially concerning Latin America: Woodrow Wilson believed that the US government should act morally when engaging foreign governments and peoples, and to avoid the 19th century mindset of "conquering" territory to serve just the American interest.

He said:

"Human rights, national integrity, and opportunity as against material interests—that, ladies and gentlemen, is the issue which we now have to face. I want to take this occasion to say that the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest. She will devote herself to showing that she knows how to make honorable and fruitful use of the territory she has, and she must regard it as one of the duties of friendship to see that from no quarter are material interests made superior to human liberty and national opportunity. I say this, not with a single thought that anyone will gainsay it, but merely to fix in our consciousness what our real relationship with the rest of America is. It is the relationship of a family of mankind devoted to the development of true constitutional liberty. We know that that is the soil out of which the best enterprise springs. We know that this is a cause which we are making in common with our neighbors, because we have had to make it for ourselves."

"This is not America because it is rich. This is not America because it has set up for a great population great opportunities of material prosperity. America is a name which sounds in the ears of men everywhere as a synonym with individual opportunity because a synonym of individual liberty. I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the nation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best and be his best, and that means the release of all the splendid energies of a great people who think for themselves."

You can find his entire speech here: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-before-the-southern-commercial-congress-mobile-alabama

We know that Woodrow Wilson finished his speech and continued his tour of Mobile. But what happened to the Lyric Theater? And where is it in downtown Mobile?

The Lyric Theater was built in 1906 as a vaudeville theater, complete with 1,200 seats and a full backstage. The building was located on the southwest corner of Conti and Joachim streets. Its facade was neo-Classical, which was very popular in the early 20th century. When it opened, it was a popular attraction downtown. Unfortunately for the Lyric, the larger Saenger Theater was built right beside it. The two theaters competed, with the Lyric Theater being closed and demolished in 1950. You can see in the Sandborn maps that the Lyric Theater shared a block with the McGill Institute, the Cathlic boys school that would ultimately become McGill-Toolen High School.

On October 2nd, President Trump will become the 8th sitting US president to visit Mobile. These are the dates for all of our Presidential visitors:

Theodore Roosevelt - Oct. 23, 1905
President Woodrow Wilson - Oct. 27, 1913,
President Richard Nixon - May 25, 1971
President Gerald Ford - Sept. 26, 1976
President Jimmy Carter - Sept. 14, 1979
President George W. Bush - Sept. 2, 2005, June 21, 2007
President Barack Obama -June 14, 2010

Schedule a tour with Tours of LODA! We will walk right beside this amazing piece of history (so much more!)

09/28/2026

We need your help!!

Does anyone have a picture of the "Sister Cities Sign Post", that was erected and dedicated by the city in 1978?

At the intersection of Monroe St, S. Royal, and Water St (at the end of the parking lot), there is a small circular wrought iron fence. Inside the fence is a stone marker, celebrating the Sister Cities Program in Mobile:

*
Sister Cities Sign Post
Dedicated January 1978
City of Mobile
Sister Cities Program

Malaga, Spain; Puerto Barrios, Guatemala; Pau, France; Worms, W. Germany; Ashdod, Israel; Kagushima, Japan

Commissioners
Gary A Greenough - Robert B Doyle Jr - Lambert C Mims

John Marston, President of Sister Cities Federation
*

Does anyone have a picture of the "Sister Cities Sign Post", that was erected and dedicated by the city in 1978?

Since the 1960s, Mobile has maintained and established relationships with other international Cities, in order to encourage economic growth, cultural exchanges and educational opportunities. The list of Sister Cities has changed since the marker was put in place in 1978. Mobile's current list of Sister Cities:

Havana, Cuba
Ichihara, Japan
Worms, Germany
Katowice, Poland
Malaga, Spain
Pyeongtaek, South Korea
Constanta, Romania
Cockburn, Australia
Ari'el, Israel

You can learn more about our Sister Cities on the Visit Mobile website: https://www.cityofmobile.gov/sister-cities/

09/12/2026

Learn the architecture of Mobile: French Creole Cottage!!

Most of the time, when we talk about an architectural style, we start by explaining where it developed and what impacts it had on Mobile when it was imported to the city.....but not this time!

French Creole architecture developed right here along our section of the Gulf Coast! It is a gorgeous blending of French colonial and Caribbean influences, with practical characteristics that will make sense to anyone that has lived or visited the Gulf Coast in summer. There are several differnet types of commercial and residential of French Creole architecture across the Gulf Coast, so we are going to focus on the French Creole Cottage!

The French Creole Cottage is a architectural style, popularized from the 1790s to the 1830s. Its predominantly exterior features are: a high steeped, hipped roof; expansive galleries/porches on the front and rear; pier-and-beam raised foundations; two door entry way; French decorations for doorways and windows. For many of the remaining older Creole Cottages in Mobile, other architectural influences add different elements to our Creole cottages: former windows (from the Federal and Greek Revivalist styles) or cast iron ornamentation or decorations (typically unavailable to builders when the Creole Cottages were most populat).

Starting in the 1600s, French colonials came from Europe to Canada and the Caribbean, and brought their building styles with them! The French built Normandy cottages on the Canadian frontier, with steeply pitched, hipped roofs and a simple square forms. These cottages were built with natural materials. As these settlers moved west and south (following the Mississippi River) and began building settlements along the Gulf Coast, this Normandy building style started to change! With no means to make bricks or work stone, the walls of the first homes on the Gulf Coast were made of cypress framing, with the walls finished with bousillage (a mixture of clay and straw or Spanish moss used for insulation). The French settlers, having settled parts of the Caribbean, had learned to put wide porches or galleries around the house, to provide shade and shelter in the heat, when it would be too hot to stay inside. These wide porches also helped to protect the bousillage walls, which tended to disintegrate in the heavy southern rains. Flooding was also a problem in early French settlements, so the buildings were built on pier-and-beam foundations, which raised the buildings off the soil, away from floods, and provided much needed ventilation under the house. In "From Fort to Port" Ms. Gould provides a good illustration for how the French architecture changed to accommodate these practical adaptations!

One of the best surviving examples of a pre-Civil War Creole Cottage in Mobile is in the middle of downtown, on the south side of Cathedral Square! The Portier House was built sometime in the 1820s or early 1830s.we dont have an exact date, because the first written record of the house was when the Catholic Church purchased it in 1834. It served as the home of the first five Bishops of Mobile. After 1906, it has served a number of functions, today being the Catholic Parish Office. It was most recently renovated in 2007!

If you want to walk around the Portier House and learn more about the amazing history in downtown Mobile, send us a message and schedule a tour! This is just one of the 30+ historic and interesting buildings you can see on the tour!!

08/24/2026

The corner of Dauphin St and Royal St has been occupied by a variety of farms, buildings, shops and businesses since the earliest French settlements of Mobile. Today is no different: there are three amazong businesses tucked in the shadow of the Van Antwerp building at 105-109 Dauphin Street!

In the early 19th century, a row of Federal row houses was constructed. These buildings watched the Van Antwerp building be constructed (and their roofline can still be seen on the Van Antwerp building!) They lasted until the mid-20th century, before being replaced by the current buildings.

We have two sets of historic pictures of these buildings: one from the late 1920s, showing the Federal row buildings, one from the early 1970s with the current buildings. Interestingly, both of these pictures show dffernet shoe stores! Apparently, through the first half of the 20th century, the buildings beside the Van Antwerp building was the place to buy shoes in downtown Mobile!

Today, there are two amazing vintage shops and the best bicycle shop in downtown occupying these buildings! Take a trip down Dauphin, tour the buildings, and buy something awesome from wonderful businesses downtown

Soul Kiss Vintage
Azalea City Bicycle Company
Mobile’s House of Vintage

07/09/2026

Learn the ARCHITECTURE of downtown Mobile: Italiante architecture

Italiante architecture is a 19th century architectural style that was based on rustic 16th century Italian Renaissance architecture with Picturesque aesthetics. It is characterized by low-pitched or flat roofs; projecting eaves supported by corbels; pedimented windows and doors; arch-headed, pedimented or Serlian windows; cupolas; quoins; and loggias.

Italiante was popular in Mobile from around 1840 to the late 1880s. The Italiante style is here in Mobile today as both residential and commercial buildings. Unlike the older Federal style (which remained relatively unchanged from the 1790s to the 1840s in Mobile), the Italiante style varies on Dauphin Street, due to changes in technology: cast iron developed in the US around the time the Italiante style came to prominence. Cast iron foundries allowed for unique design decisions. In Mobile, these unique designs are most obvious in the arches over windows. The facade was built in brick, and the cast iron arches were installed in the arches. You can see this brick work by comparing the fire damaged Metzgers Building (without the cast iron) with the Levy Building (with the arches still installed)

There are great examples of both residential and commercial buildings around Dauphin Street:

Old Town Hall: one of the grandest examples of Italiante architecture, that includes a cupola!

Elgin Building: Pre-Civil War example, with a cast iron facade (see our video!)

Guesnard House: example of a residential house in downtown

222-226 Dauphin Street: these three buildings were built several years apart, but all styled togeher as Italianate

The easiest way to pick out commercial Italiante architecture in Mobile is by the arched or segmented arched windows (usually on the second/third story). The windows are generally tall and thin. The arches can be brick arches or cast iron arches.

Interestingly, there are several buildings built before the Civil War in the Federal style, but were changed in the late 1800s to Italiante style. There are also several buildings built in the 1800s as Italiante buildings, but were changed in the early 20th century. If you know what your looking for, you can spot the differences!

If you want to see these amazing buildings in person (or want to learn where the hidden Italiante buildings are at), send us a message and schedule a tour!! Every building pictured is on our tour!

07/06/2026

All sorts of amazing things are happening in Mobile in July!

06/27/2026

We want to hear your stories about downtown Mobile!

Tours of LODA wants to learn everything there is to know about downtown Mobile. And what better way to learn about our time in Mobile, than from the people that lived and worked and played in downtown!

We would live to hear your stories about the buildings, businesses, adventures, parades, resturants, and communities up and down the streets of downtown.

If you have any pictures of downtown, we would love to see them...and go back to take pictures of how those places look today!

The tour route is marked on the map. If you have any pictures or interesting stories along the route, we would love to add your experiences to the tour!

As always, if you want to have a new adventure and take new pictures, send us a message to schedule a tour!!

06/17/2026

From one dragon to another....welcome back Mobile Mysticks!!

The Mobile Mysticks will officially drop the puck and compete in the new Mobile Arena, in October 2027 as a part of the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL). The team will play 29 regular season home games. The Mobile Mysticks is owned and operated by Zawyer Sports and Entertainment.The SPHL is comprised of 12 member teams located throughout the southeastern and midwestern United States.

Get all your info, updates, and tickets at the Mysticks website: https://mystickshockey.com/

A little Mysticks history:

The first Mobile Mysticks were a professional minor league ice hockey team that played in the ECHL. They played their home games at the Mobile Civic Center. The team was founded in 1995 as an expansion franchise, joining the ECHL alongside the Louisville RiverFrogs and the Louisiana IceGators. The Mysticks owed their name to the prevalence of mystic societies—social organizations responsible for throwing parades and balls during the Carnival season—that existed in Mobile since the early 18th century. In 2002, the franchise suspended operations and moved to Duluth, Georgia for the 2003–04 season.

06/16/2026

In 1905, the firm 'L. H. Meyer and Sons' built a gorgeous building at 260 Dauphin Street. This new three story, neo-Classical structure housed Norman and Maurice Meyer's dry goods and clothing store. This brand new building represented the brother's expanding business, which they inherited from their father Louis H. Meyer.

This building is one of the first buildings in downtown Mobile that hinted at the changes in architectural stylings of new construction in Mobile in the early 20th century. Since the end of the Civil War, Mobile architecture was a blend of late Italiante and (after 1880) Victorian styles: heavy hood molds over windows, elaborate keystone, opulent Victorian stylings. The Meyer Building breaks from the 19th century in spectacular neo Classic style: the Meyer's facade has rectangular windows with flat arches, balanced and symetrical brickwork, and classical egg and dart molding in between large dental cornice bricks. Neo classical style came into fashion after the introduction of Beaux Arts architecture and the Chicago's World Fair in 1893. A great way to see the changes in this architecture is to compare the Hammel Department Store (the older 19th century style) with the Van Antwerp Building, Mobile's first skyscraper (the new 20th century style)

Originally, the building was just a 3 story building. In the early 1920s, a one story addition was added. By 1955, the addition was expanded to 2 stories. Today, the Meyer Building is home to Urban Emporium, one of the best places to shop on Dauphin Street! The first floor is completely filled with store space. The second story and third story are accessed by an exterior door that opens to the street and is used for storage. From the street, the buildings windows and doors give the illusion of three even stories. However, the first floor has a much taller ceiling, so the two upper stories are significantly shorter.

What happened to L. H. Meyer and his Sons? Louis Meyer (the father) was a Jewish German immigrant to Mobile. He established himself here in the 1850s and had a large family. He started a dry goods store, and kept it running until he died in 1903. He was buried in the Sha'arai Shomayim Cemetery (Springhill Avenue Temple Cemetary). Unfortunately, by the 1920s, the LH Meyer and Sons store had been incorporate into another store, and both brothers had passed by 1935. They are both buried in the cemetery near their father.

Send Tours of LODA a message to schedule a tour! There is so much history to discover in just a few blocks of downtown Mobile!

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Mobile, AL
36602

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