Category Archives: Birmingham Historical Society

Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, Frederick Law Olmsted, Gardening, George Ward, Olmsted Brothers, Parks & Recreation, Red Mountain Park, Vestavia, Warren Manning

Happy 200th Birthday, Frederick Law Olmsted!

Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America is a co-production of WNED PBS, Buffalo/Toronto and Florentine Films/Hott Productions Inc., made possible by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor and The Margaret L. Wendt Foundation. With funding provided by HSBC, The Tiffany & Co. Foundation and The C.E. & S. Foundation. With additional support from The Peter C. Cornell Trust and Mass Humanities. (Click on image above to view)

Birmingham is among many American cities that owes a debt of gratitude to the efforts and vision of Frederick Law Olmsted. Considered the founder of American landscape architecture, he was among the first to recognize the importance to public health of providing green spaces and parks in burgeoning cities at the turn of the century.

First, as a writer for the New York Times, he toured the country, and saw the anxiety, irritability, and impatience that close quarters in smoke-filled cities induced. He abhorred the segregation of the antebellum South. Olmsted was convinced that access to green spaces would reduce stress at a time when that real estate was being rapidly developed. Ultimately, Olmsted believed that public spaces would bring people from all walks of life together in a harmonious environment.

Subsequently in 1865, at the age of 43, upon becoming a landscape designer, he became an unintentional reformer who set out to change the way urban Americans engaged with one another.

His legacy in Birmingham includes:

  • an impressive plan for a comprehensive park system,
  • the plan for Birmingham’s civic cen­ter with its governmental buildings surrounding today’s Linn Park,
  • the site selection for today’s Samford University, and
  • the site selection and general plan for the Vestavia Country Club.

He invented parkways; he promoted curving, landscape- driven, suburban streets; he created planned communities, and experimental forestry. He connected cities with a series of parks, and ’rules of engagement’ that would allow everyone to protect and enjoy common green spaces. And perhaps his best known and also his first project is Central Park in New York City.

“The time will come when New York will be built up, when the rocky formations of [Manhattan] will have been converted into foundations for rows of monotonous straight streets and piles of erect, angular buildings. There will be no suggestion left of its present varied surface, with the single exception of the Park.” ~ Frederick Law Olmsted

His legacy provided the guidebook as to how American cities are planned today. We will forever celebrate the gifts he gave us! So, Happy Birthday, Mr. Olmsted!

(Many events are being planned and attendance may be in person, virtual or streaming due to Covid restrictions. Stay tuned for more details.)

A comprehensive film and commentary has been produced by WNED PBS and can be viewed HERE

To see the sheer VOLUME of work by The Olmsted Brothers, view the MAP HERE. Select an area to explore and download project maps. For instructions, read THIS

View Birmingham Historical Society’s newsletter regarding Olmsted’s legacy HERE

Please also refer to Birmingham Historical Society’s publication: The Olmsted Vision – Parks for Birmingham. A Publication about the Early Years and Today

Read more HERE: https://birminghamhistoricalsociety.com/the-olmsted-vision-parks-for-birmingham/
Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, Brock’s Gap, Research

Brock’s Gap as a Pedestrian Pathway per Hoover Developer

Click HERE for full article

The mission of the Birmingham Historical Society includes supporting the preservation of historic landmarks and educating the community about their significance. This often requires field study, mapping, photography, and fact checking before informing owners and developers about their property’s history.

Many times, owners are initially unaware of the historic significance of their property, but once it’s pointed out, they begin to see the historic landmarks on their property as amenities that not only need to be preserved but that can also enhance its marketability .

As posted in The Hoover Sun by Jon Anderson on November 25, 2021, Developer and Signature Homes President, Jonathon Belcher, soon realized how working around Brock’s Gap could enhance any future development as he states:

“… (he) wants to use the Brock’s Gap cut as a pedestrian pathway to help connect Ross Bridge and the Everlee community to 10 miles of mountain bike trails his company built in Trace Crossings, and eventually to historic coke ovens across the Cahaba River in Helena.”

“For us, that old railbed will serve as a great connector trail that’s already built, so we like having that there,” he said. “It enhances the communities we create.”

Completed 150 years ago, the beautiful, forested railbed at Brock’s Gap was the last and most laborious stretch of the South and North Alabama Railroad that finally connected Montgomery to the mineral region of central Alabama. With this important link finally in place, the city of Birmingham was founded a month later, on December 19th, 1871. For more photos and information, please click here and scroll to read all articles related to this issue (including this one).

And a year later, the final link of South & North —from Birmingham to Decatur — created the first railway linking the north and the south in the United States.

Thanks largely to the efforts of Birmingham Historical Society trustees, Marjorie White and Birgit Kibelka, the importance of Brock’s Gap has been brought to the attention of not only the community, but also to the developers and city leaders who will determine its future. For the Birmingham Historical Society, that is their stated mission, accomplished.

Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, Food History, Heritage Society, Highlands Bar & Grill, Restaurant History, Spanish Stores, Trustees

Heritage Society celebrates 40 years of James Beard award winning restaurant, Highlands Bar & Grill

Birmingham Historical Society President, Wayne Hester, greets members of the Heritage Society as they gather to celebrate nearly 40 years of culinary excellence at Highlands Bar &Grill. Chef Frank Stitt opened his award winning restaurant in the historic Spanish Stores building in Five Points South in 1980 in what was then a ’fine food desert’. Since then he and Pardis have received multiple awards including James Beard’s Best Restaurant in the United States, as well as training many of the restaurant/entrepreneurs that have made Birmingham a fine food destination.

From “The Heritage Society Goes to Highlands” by Marjorie L. White, Editor, November 13, 2021
Audubon Society, Birmingham Historical Society, George Ward, Newsletters, Vestavia

Birmingham becomes a Bird & Wildflower Sanctuary in 1927 thanks to Mayor George Ward

https://alaudubon.org/

Today’s Alabama Audubon was organized in 1927 by Birmingham Mayor George Ward who was influenced by birdhouse salesman, Joseph Dodson. After purchasing a collection of his products for his private residence in Vestavia, Ward became an avid bird enthusiast. He solicited the help of Dr. H.E. Wheeler, who was a curator of the natural history museum at the University of Alabama, to present an illustrated ‘bird talk’ and the Birmingham Audubon Society was born with 49 members, and George Ward as President.

Thanks to his efforts and those of his neighbor, E.J. Smyer, who had an interest in preserving wildflowers, a law was passed to preserve wildflowers in 1927 and wild birds in 1929 which exists to this day. Of the 800 recorded species in the United States, 327 were documented by the National Audubon Society to reside in Alabama.

Birmingham Historical Society’s November 2021 newsletter elaborates on the history of this organization and lists the 49 charter members. Interested in birding trails nearby? Here’s a map and list of popular areas to explore in Jefferson County. This guide or this list might be helpful as well. Finally, the Alabama Audubon’s quarterly guide lists upcoming events through the end of the 2021 year.

The most common bird in Alabama is the American Robin, followed by the Downy Woodpecker. For a list of the 24 most common birds, please refer to this list.
Birmingham Historical Society, Book Sale, George Ward, Research, Vestavia

Alabama NewsCenter shares Mayor George Ward’s story

Many thanks to the Alabama NewsCenter division of Alabama Power for sharing the story of George Ward’s contributions to the City of Birmingham with their customers. In their interest of highlighting ”…entrepreneurs doing innovative things, communities that make our quality of life so much better, and people doing things both great and small that make all the difference”, Alabama NewsCenter is helping the Birmingham Historical Society spread the word about a soon to be released book on Birmingham Mayor George Ward’s contributions, entitled Birmingham: The City Beautiful, compliments of G. Ward.

The NewsCenter article includes several photos of parks (courtesy of the City of Birmingham Parks & Recreation Board) envisioned by Ward in the early 19th century that are still being used today. However, his best known park was his residence on Shades Crest Mountain in Vestavia which no longer exists, but is now memorialized by the Temple of Sibyl.

You’re invited to attend a talk about the book to be released November 1st, 2021 at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. The book may be purchased there or from the Birmingham Historical Society.

Birmingham Historical Society, Book Sale, Book Signing, Gardening, George Ward, Shades Crest Road, Vestavia

You’re Invited! Nov 1, 2021

Birmingham Historical Society
invites you to
An Evening in Honor of George B. Ward
Monday, November 1, 2021
7:00 p.m. Strange Auditorium
at
Birmingham Botanical Gardens
PROGRAM
By Marjorie White
SIGNING OF THE NEWLY RELEASED
Birmingham: The City Beautiful, Compliments of G. Ward
Published by the Society
with the financial support of
The Sterne-Agee Foundation
Members paid for 2021 may pick up their copy of the new release.
Books not picked up will be mailed following the meeting. Additional copies will be available for purchase for $30 (cash or check), both at the meeting and from Birmingham Historical Society, One Sloss Quarters, Birmingham, AL 35222.


INVITATION FRONT: Left, top to bottom: George Ward, Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, 1907; Birmingham City Hall (1901-1950); George Ward Park, 1901 Greensprings Avenue, Birmingham.
Center, top to bottom: The Relay House, the city’s first hotel and home to the Ward family, its proprietors (1871-1886); Cover, Birmingham: The City Beautiful booklet prepared and signed by Mayor G. Ward, 1908; View of Birmingham at the Red Mountain Gap, the city’s first protected viewshed, enacted 1929.
Right, top to bottom: George Ward, investment banker, builder of Vestavia, 1926; Ward’s Vestavia temple residence (1926-1971); Ward’s Temple of Sibyl (1929), as relocated to its park site on U.S. 31 at the entrance to today’s City of Vestavia Hills. Historic photographs courtesy Birmingham, Alabama Public Library Department of Archives and Manuscripts; color photographs courtesy Abraham Odrezin, 2020.

“George Ward was a most unusual and an unusually accomplished man with a significant legacy. Ward was alderman, mayor, and city commission president, an investment banker, a civic and community leader, a student and a reader, a writer, a lover of classics, a gentleman farmer, an idealist, sentimentalist, natu- ralist, conservationist, birder, and floriculturist, in short, a many-sided man of extraordinary ability.”
— Marjorie L. White, Author, Birmingham: The City Beautiful, Compliments of G. Ward


“Birmingham: The City Beautiful, Compliments of G. Ward is a fundamentally important contribution to the material available on our community. It places Birmingham in the City Beautiful Movement in the context of urban America. The document can also serve as a guide for citizens interested in becoming en- gaged in their community. It is a manual of civic participation. Three cheers.”
— Edward S. Lamonte, Retired Professor of History, Birmingham-Southern College, Former Chief of Staff to Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington Jr.


“Every man, woman, and child in Birmingham seems to be imbued with the city beautiful idea. I have never observed in any other city universal interest as is being manifested by the people in this city.”
— Warren Manning in “Manning Tells of Progress of Work-Talks to Commission of City Beautiful Plan,” Birmingham Ledger, November 19, 1914

(click HERE to purchase from Amazon)

Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, Red Mountain, Red Mountain Park, Trustees

Field of Dreams

Build it and they will come! Red Mountain Park is now a 1500 acre park with 15 miles of trails. But back then it was a former mining complex, and a ‘safe place’ that was healing and close to nature for Ishkooda resident Erwin Batain.

Son of a miner, Batain cleared a path from his backyard to one of the 15 mines that originally operated on the property. Overwhelmed with the beauty of the area, he brought his sister, Evanne Gibson, president of Birmingham’s West End Community, and Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson, to see it in the 1990’s along with many friends and family members who he thought would benefit from the meditative and healing power of nature. His enthusiasm for the area earned him the title, “The Prophet of Red Mountain”.

By 2012, it was officially established as one of the largest urban parks in the United States, with access to Birmingham west end communities of not only Iskooda but also Tarpley City, West Goldwire, Garden Highlands, and Mason City.

Jefferson County Commisioner Sheila Tyson dubbed it Birmingham’s west end ‘jewel’. And another of its early advocates was Birmingham Historical Society Trustee and Lawson State Community College history instructor, Gregory Wilson. Due to its rich geological, industrial, and archeological history, Wilson immediately recognized the value of using Red Mountain Park as an immense educational tool.

“[At RMP], I saw the geology, I saw the archaeology, I saw Native American history,” added Wilson, who has used the space to teach his own students by having them tour the space and ask questions of an archaeologist.

“Educators tend not to see [the potential] because it’s … a diamond in the rough,” he added. “They say, ‘If you bring us into a nice, air-conditioned building, that’s OK.’ But there’s a wealth of knowledge, history, and information outdoors.”

The park is FREE and is open from 7AM to 7PM. Download the trail map HERE or get directions HERE

Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, Oak Hill Cemetery, Research, Tours, Trustees

Ancestral Memories preserved in Birmingham’s Oak Hill Cemetery

Oak Hill Cemetery’s tour guide and historian, Wilhelmina Thomas, is featured in a podcast/blog entitled “Love Lives in This Place/The Order of the Good Death”

Death is not frightening, according to Birmingham Historical Society Trustee Wilhelmina Thomas, who leads tours through the historic Oak Hill Cemetery. She is among a number of volunteers who dress in period costumes and portray a deceased character buried there. Ms. Thomas brings to life the stories of Birmingham’s founders, politicians, and civil rights leaders. But she particularly likes to draw attention to the black elitists who are buried there as they are often overlooked in Birmingham’s history.

“The majority of the Black people in the cemetery were business owners, pastors, and started churches,” Wilhelmina explained. “When we’re looking at the Black people buried at Oak Hill, in the late 19th century, they’d have been the elitist. They were defined by the color of their skin and by how much money they had. The Black people who are buried there were very well educated, spoke more than one language, and were trying to build a community.” 

In researching and telling the stories of residents buried there, Wilhelmina Thomas has become a compassionate voice of black history, and along with other volunteers, keeps Oak Hill residents ‘alive’.

Volunteers lead walking tours on the second Saturday of every month. Learn more and get tickets on Oak Hill’s website.

Birmingham Historical Society, Birmingham Landmarks, Brock’s Gap, Railroads, Research, Shades Creek

BHS concerns considered for Planned Parkway that could destroy Historic Landmark

It’s rewarding when the efforts of Birmingham Historical Society trustees to preserve a first-class historical site are not only recognized, but seriously considered by city leaders and developers in urban planning. Thanks to the research and site visits of BHS Director Marjorie White, and BHS Trustee and Hoover resident Birgit Kilbeka, plans for a 4 mile parkway that could potentially destroy the landmark Brock’s Gap are now being debated. This article in The Hoover Sun by Jon Anderson highlights the importance of what is being proposed.

An earlier BHS post follows the mile long walk along the railbed. And this BHS article highlights the importance of Brock’s Gap to the City of Birmingham and why it needs to be preserved.

Thank you to Birmingham Historical Society Trustees for bringing historical sites to the attention of developers. And thank you to developers and city planners for listening and responding to these concerns!

Birmingham Historical Society, Newsletters, Railroads, Red Mountain, Shades Creek, Vulcan

What Might Have Been – Vulcan’s Underground Wonderland

Monorails, subterranean boat tours, historic cycloramas and murals under Vulcan Park and The Club never materialized, but were suggested when The Club first opened in 1951. Inspired by the fantasy of California’s recently opened Disneyland, The Club management and the Chamber of Commerce did a series of promotional watercolors now in the collection of Birmingham Historical Society.

Read more about the history of “The Cut” in Birmingham Historical Society’s latest newsletter HERE. Want more? Join us!