Alabama has the ‘classiest and nicest Trump HQ in the nation.’ Here’s a look inside.

Last Tuesday’s Indiana primary victory, along with the subsequent suspensions of Ted Cruz and John Kasich’s presidential campaigns, made real estate mogul Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2016.

That means that at some point this summer, Trump’s Alabama headquarters in Montgomery will reopen.

The building that served as Trump’s headquarters prior to the Alabama primary this spring is one of Montgomery’s oldest pieces of real estate, dating back to the 1840s when the original Alabama capital building was constructed.

Stephen Decatur Button, the architect for Montgomery’s first capital building, designed Knox Hall, which survived the Civil War, multiple owners throughout the decades, an apartment building that was attached to the building during the 1950s and a fire during the building’s restoration during the 1980s.

“There’s no question, it’s the classiest and nicest Trump headquarters in the nation,” said former state legislator Perry O. Hooper Jr., who now volunteers for Trump’s Alabama campaign.

Montgomery historian Mary Ann Neeley sat down with the Alabama Center for Real Estate recently at Knox Hall, which sits at 419 South Perry St. in downtown Montgomery, and gave the center a little bit of insight into the history of the building.

“William Knox was an Irishman who came to this country in the early 19th century and married a girl from Tennessee,” Neeley said. “They came to Montgomery in the early 1830s.”

Knox, who would eventually commission Button to design Knox Hall, was the president of a local bank in Montgomery, Neeley said.

“The Knox house is the one that has survived through thick and thin,” Neeley said.

Neeley knows first hand about the home’s ability to survive the ages. She was a part of the effort to restore the house in the early 1980s when the home caught fire.

“We were about through, and one morning one of the men who monitors the police and fire radios all night called and said “Knox Hall is on fire,’” she said. “The fire department did a really good job.”

Neeley said that did not stop the restoration process.

“We went back and did it again and did what we needed to do,” Neeley said.

Between the time Knox’s widow died in the 1890s and the fire of 1983, Knox Hall passed through multiple owners who turned the home into a boarding house at one point.

During the 1950s, the trend to live in the downtown area led the owners at the time to build an apartment building attached to Knox Hall, Neeley said. That part of the property was demolished in the early 1970s.

Today, the home is owned by Montgomery businessman Bruce Reid, and the property is listed for sale or lease.

For the foreseeable future, however, Knox Hall will continue serve as the Alabama headquarters for Trump’s presidential campaign.