A small unassuming brick office building on 14th Avenue, marked by a simple historical plaque, where Albert Patterson was assassinated in 1954. Patterson, a Phenix City lawyer who had just won the Alabama Democratic nomination for Attorney General on a promise to clean up the city's notorious vice rackets, was shot in the alley outside his office.
The killing was the turning point in Phenix City's history. Within weeks the governor had declared martial law, the National Guard had occupied the town, and the gambling halls and brothels of "Sin City, USA" were systematically shut down. The story made national news, was made into a 1955 film noir (The Phenix City Story), and is still the defining event in local memory. The building is not open to the public but is worth a quick look from the street.