She was an officer of the Birmingham Beautification Board, the Women's Civic Club of Birmingham, the Birmingham Festival of Arts, and the Birmingham Art Association. To Georges' eye they gave her petite 5'-3" frame "a better line", so she turned to having them custom made when they later fell out of fashion.īridges receiving the "Birmingham Woman of the Year" award in 1953īridges gave up her studio there to spend more time in Birmingham in the 1950s, joining several civic boards. When Carmen Miranda made platform shoes famous, Eleanor began buying them. The gardens surrounding the house on the 2-acre estate were filled with large trees, flowers and fountains. Years later they launched the Valley Civic Theatre with a performance of Oscar Wilde's "Salome" in the front yard. The Little Theatre had its beginnings in those salons. They hosted themed discussions each Sunday evening. The Bridges' parlor was a landmark in the progressive social and cultural scene. Later they used the same rooms to house recovering alcoholics under a local doctor's care. No formal adoption papers were filed and most of the children returned to their families when the economy recovered. The subsequent winter found them in California. Incensed, Bridges packed them all up to move to Taxco, Mexico, where she ran a winter art colony. A county delinquency officer visited one day to insist that the children be enrolled in public schools. Her theories on education attracted attention and she often made presentations to share her experiences. Over the next decade as many as eighteen children lived with them in dormitories added on to the house.īridges styled the undertaking as a boarding school and developed her own curriculum, focusing on art and literature. They had not intended to stay, but, when the Great Depression came, they took in several children who had been abandoned at mining towns in the district. In 1928 the Bridgeses returned to Birmingham on a freighter, via Cuba. There she met the Duchess of Malta who arranged an exhibition of her paintings in Madrid. They later lived in Greece, Turkey, Morocco and Mallorca, where she founded an art colony. Because of Georges' strong resemblance to the actor Douglas Fairbanks, the two often played pranks on others. Soon the couple moved to Paris and circulated in the expatriate community there, which included Tallulah Bankhead, Norman Bel Geddes, Bud Fisher, Ernest Hemingway, and F. They stabled horses to ride through Shades Valley and around Edgewood Lake and summered at Lake George. In 1921 they built a large pink stucco house on Edgewood Boulevard where Georges devoted himself to sculpting, soon winning prizes and commissions. They studied together at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts until their first daughter, Mary Eleanor, called "London", was born. They were married at her family house in front of friends while the family remained upstairs, then honeymooned at a camp on the Warrior River. They were engaged within a week, despite the strong objections of her father. In Birmingham she took classes at Birmingham-Southern College and Samford University.Īt the age of 19 she met World War I veteran and aspiring sculptor Georges Bridges at a debutante party in Birmingham. She continued her studies throughout her life, at prestigious institutions such as Harvard, the Sorbonne and the Académie Julian. During the summer she operated a tractor and filled in as a cook at a local farm, until the lady of the house heard that she was an Ogontz girl and threw a party in her honor. The incident nearly led to her expulsion, but she was able to continue at the Pennsylvania Academy and studies sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. On a whim, she joined a suffragists' parade in Philadelphia, missing an appointment with her school chaperone. She continued at the Ogontz School for Young Ladies in Abington, Pennsylvania, where, for a year, she was the roommate of Amelia Earhart. She attended the Margaret Allen School and took lessons from local artists such as Hannah Elliot, though her father had disapproved. Stephens Expressway.Įleanor decided as a child to pursue a career as an artist. The house was later demolished for the Elton B. Eleanor befriended her neighbors, Mildred Kettig and Mary Hard, and chatted up President Taft when he was a guest at the house during his 1909 tour. Because she preferred only silver and blue in her bedroom, her father agreed to have the room's chandelier sent off for silver-plating. The family moved to Birmingham when she was a few months old, and she grew up, with eight siblings, in the Richard Massey residence on Red Mountain, famed for its Italian gardens which were the setting for numerous parties and dances. Her father was the founder of the Massey Business College. Bridges was born to Richard and Bessie Spencer Massey.
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