On this site once stood a successful boardinghouse owned by three generations of African American businesswomen. Born enslaved in Triana, Madison County, in 1826, Winnie Parker acquired this property at the corner of Church and Railroad Street around 1869. By 1871, she was the proprietor of a well-appointed, two-story boardinghouse and was Decatur's first businesswoman of color in her own right. In the mid-1880s, Parker oversaw an addition to the home and, beyond her business ventures, was a civic leader in the surrounding Old Town community. In 1888, looking to the future of the business, she conveyed the deed to her nineteen-year-old daughter, Fannie Parker Hayes, who assumed ownership in 1903 upon her mother's death. Hayes managed the boardinghouse until her death in 1938. That same year, the Parker Hayes Boarding House and Tourist Home was listed as the only Decatur establishment in Victor H. Green's influential Negro Motorist Green Book, created to aid African American travelers as they navigated the maze of segregation laws and customs in the country. Stella Hayes Bond continued the business until 1940, when the home was sold. It was demolished in the late 1970s.