Category Archives: Birmingham Botanical Gardens

Annual meeting, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Birmingham Historical Society, Cake & Pie Contest, CakeWalk, Favorite Pie & Cake Contest, Food History

And the Winners Are…

Thank you to all who shared cakes, stories, and recipes at our Annual Meeting last night. While our judges selected winners in five categories, all participants received a BLUE RIBBON for sharing a cake, as well as much appreciation from all those who attended the meeting and were able to taste them! There was a big variety and remarkably, no two cakes were alike.

Special thanks also goes to our two judges, Susan Swagler and Pam Lolley for a difficult job selecting winners. Susan is a Food, Books & Lifestyle Writer and a founding member & past president of Les Dames d’Escoffier International Birmingham and you can follow her at Savor.blog. Pam is retired from twenty years in the Southern Living test kitchen, a free lance cook, and also a member of Les Dames D’Escoffier. Thank you, judges!

Clockwise from top left on full screen: Potato Caramel Cake (most unusual cake), Caramel Cake (most vintage cake), Napoleon (most beautiful cake), Grand Aunt Mrytle’s Lane Cake (best memory cake), Miss Tinsley’s Sour Cream Pound Cake (best overall cake)
  • Most Unusual Cake: Potato Caramel Cake (Alleen Cater) – secret ingredient, mashed potatoes! Pam Lolley said her 20 years in the Southern Living test kitchen, she’d never heard of using mashed potatoes in a cake and it was delicious!
  • Most Vintage Cake: Caramel Cake (Elizabeth Hester) – this brought back wonderful childhood memories for the judges and was considered a standard in most southern kitchens
  • Most Beautiful Cake: Napoleon (Vasilisa Strelnikova) – the judges appreciated the care with which this cake was decorated and said the baby’s breath was a beautiful addition
  • Best Overall Cake: Miss Tinsley’s Sour Cream Pound Cake (Wilson Green) – the judges agreed that you can’t beat a good pound cake and this was delicious. One BHS attendee stated that Myrtle Tinsley was one of her church members and friend, a former schoolteacher, and a dynamite cook!
  • Best Memory Statement: Grand Aunt Mrytle’s Lane Cake (Don Cosper) -the secret ingredient was a cup of whiskey, somewhat scandalous among these Baptist bakers! This original cake recipe is one of the oldest in Alabama and was immortalized in To Kill a Mockingbird.

All the cakes were accompanied by childhood stories and we hope that one day the Birmingham Historical Society can assemble these recipes and stories into a book!

Annual meeting, Bankhead, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, BOOK, Book Sale, Book Signing, CakeWalk, Deep South Dynasty, family history, Favorite Pie & Cake Contest, Food History, Historic Preservation, lecture, Meetings, Membership, Research, Trustees

The Bankhead Highway

Did you think that the Bankhead Highway was local (like I did)? Far from it! Come hear more about it Monday night at the BHS annual meeting and learn about the remarkable Bankhead family of Alabama.

Annual meeting, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Birmingham Historical Society, BOOK, Book Sale, Book Signing, Cake & Pie Contest, Deep South Dynasty, family history, Favorite Pie & Cake Contest, lecture, Meetings, Membership, Research, University of Alabama

Annual Meeting featuring The Bankheads of Alabama

Everyone is welcome at the Annual Meeting of the Birmingham Historical Society on February 27th at 7:00PM at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Copies of the book, “Deep South Dynasty” published by University of Alabama Press will be available for sale and signed by Professor of History, Kari Frederickson. A popular annual cake walk follows the meeting.

Annual meeting, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Birmingham Historical Society, Book Signing, Cake & Pie Contest, family history, Favorite Pie & Cake Contest, Food History, lecture, Meetings, Research

Mark your Calendars for 2023

ANNUAL MEETING

The Birmingham Historical Society’s Annual Meeting for 2023  has been scheduled for February 27, 2023 at 7 p.m. at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. (Free and open to the public)

Our speaker will be Kari Frederickson, professor of Southern History at the University of Alabama, speaking on The Bankheads of Alabama and autographing her recently published book Deep South Dynasty: The Bankheads of Alabama.

“Deep South Dynasty: The Bankheads of Alabama is a deeply researched epic family biography that reflects the complicated and evolving world inhabited by three generations of the extremely accomplished—if problematic—Bankhead family of northwest Alabama. Kari Frederickson’s expertly crafted account traces the careers of five members of the family—John Hollis Bankhead; his sons, John Hollis Bankhead Jr. and William Brockman Bankhead; his daughter, Marie Bankhead Owen; and his granddaughter, Tallulah Brockman Bankhead.”

Note that the Heritage Cake & Pie Competition will happily return to the BHS annual meeting February 27 at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. More info to come in early ’23. If you’re not familiar with this popular annual event, please click HERE!

Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, Exhibition, Frederick Law Olmsted, Olmsted Brothers, Parks & Recreation, Research, Warren Manning

The Life and Legacy of the Olmsted Family by Laurence Cotton, Historian

Celebrating Olmsted: BRINGING NATURE TO THE CITY AND CREATING BREATHING SPACE FOR DEMOCRACY

As part of a series of nation-wide, year-long events celebrating the legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted and the Olmsted family of landscape architects, historian Laurence Cotton presented a lecture detailing their impact at The Birmingham Botanical Gardens on February 16th.

Consulting producer on the PBS film, Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America, Cotton had not only visited, but was often intimately familiar with many of the Olmsted projects he discussed. His slides traveled the audience across America, giving the history, motivation, and importance of each of the parks and green spaces. Many are well-known and include:

  • Niagra Falls
  • The Biltmore Estate
  • Central Park in NYC
  • Yosemite
  • The Capitol Grounds and The Washington Mall
  • The Great White City – Chicago
  • Boston’s Emerald Necklace
  • Prospect Park in Brooklyn

Cotton emphasized the social importance of the Olmsted legacy. The green spaces and parks were designed to be available to all walks of life, to enhance the health and well-being of visitors, to encourage social engagement across economic & cultural divides, to provide forestry and landscape experiments, and to stand the test of time. As he stated, Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons were true artists of the landscape, while working on a vast scale, in FOUR dimensions, with the fourth being time…to allow their design visions to mature over decades.

However, their public spaces were not always green, as Cotton illustrated by Olmsted’s plan for the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C. There, Olmsted’s step design again encouraged democracy and provided an open forum for public engagement.

As another example, their design for Niagra Falls restored and enhanced the beauty that was already there. Before and after images were startling.

Niagra gorge circa 1901

Cotton ended his travel log in Birmingham, drawing upon the resources written by The Birmingham Historical Society and Marjorie White, with a special recommendation for Shades Creek, Flowing Through Time. Related artifacts assembled by The Southern History Department of The Birmingham Public Library, were part of a special exhibit and reception following the lecture. Books by The Birmingham Historical Society on Olmsted were available, and a reading list assembled by Laurence Cotton is available HERE.