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Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company

Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company, Inc. was a company which engaged in a planned urban development in the state of Alabama in the late nineteenth century. On January 11, 1887, as Decatur, Alabama was still rebuilding from the destructive results of the war and the outbreak, the Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company, Inc., was founded by Southerners Eugene C. Gordon, C.C. Harris, and W.W. Littlejohn, and Northerners Hiram Bond and William E. Forest M.D. of New York.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

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Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company, Inc. was a company which engaged in a planned urban development in the state of Alabama in the late nineteenth century. On January 11, 1887, as Decatur, Alabama was still rebuilding from the destructive results of the war and the outbreak, the Decatur Land Improvement and Furnace Company, Inc., was founded by Southerners Eugene C. Gordon, C.C. Harris, and W.W. Littlejohn, and Northerners Hiram Bond and William E. Forest M.D. of New York. Together they and others invested $7.5 million toward purchase and development of 5,600 acres (2,300 ha) of land southeast of the city. The company formed a new city as a means of reinventing Decatur as a progressive manufacturing and transportation center following the war. They named their new city New Decatur and gave it the nickname "The Chicago of the South," referencing its status as a transportation hub, and as a marketing tool toward Midwesterners. New Decatur was designed as a planned community with the help of famed landscape architect Nathan Franklin Barrett.2

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