President and longtime Trustee and Honorary Trustee of Birmingham Historical Society, among his many other leadership roles, Sam Frazier died May 12th and was honored May 31 with a service at Grace Episcopal Church and a reception at The Club.
Sam Frazier, then a young attorney with a specialty in tax law and a passion for preservation of country estates, came to Birmingham in the early 1970s. Over the next 50 years, his corporate practice and civic service would include municipal law, public finance, real estate, counsel to four mayors, and innovative strategies for financing and preserving Birmingham’s special places and neighborhoods. Sam played key roles in both private and City and state preservation as components of a broader urban planning strategy.
Upon buying a home in Forest Park, he led the charge for researching the neighborhood’s history and nominating it for federal recognition. In 1980, Forest Park became the first Birmingham neighborhood to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places (the nation’s list of properties worthy of preservation), thereby thwarting a planned US highway that would have obliterated the neighborhood. The next year, Birmingham Historical Society joined in dedicating an historical marker to commemorate this preservation victory. Continuing to lead neighborhood revitalization over several decades, Sam served as the South Avondale-Forest Park neighborhood president and chaired its design review committee to maintain the historic fabric of its early 20th century homes. Forest Park was the first neighborhood to become a Local Historic District and institute the design review process.
Closed in 1972, Sloss Furnaces reopened following initial preservation in 1983 with Sam Frazier as president of the City of Birmingham Board and a dynamic director whom Frazier had recruited to set the vision for the open-air museum (then the only industrial site under preservation in the world). Sam was also President of Birmingham Historical Society and in 1985 recruited the Society to move to the site and move and restore an historic house there. He drafted the many contracts between Sloss, the City, and the Society and located and supervised the craftsmen to make possible our home for the next 37 years.
Also in 1985, Frazier spearheaded the renovation of the pigeon-infested and deteriorated Peter Zinszer’s Mammoth Furniture Store. Recasting cast-iron columns and capitals, the heavily corroded and sign covered storefront was restored and its interior rebuilt. Frazier’s law firm, Spain Gillion, took up residence on Second Avenue North. Participants in Society’s Downtown Discovery Tour enjoyed a special welcome in the Zinszer Building atrium. Many Society committees met in the second floor conference room. The Society’s initial Endowment policy was drafted here.
In the 1980s, the City of Birmingham instituted new commercial revitalization programs, offering rebates for façade fix-ups. In 1987, The City instituted design review to ensure appropriate treatment and protect the character and historic significance of these and other designated areas. Sam Frazier drafted the ordinance creating the City’s Design Review program and for the next 40 years served as chairman of the Design Review Committee that oversaw work in downtown and Five Points South. Both historic renovations and new construction came before the committee. Frazier’s understanding of the urban fabric, memory, and command were legendary. And he had no qualms in eloquently expressing his opinion, even to the internationally admired architect I. M. Pei who appeared with early designs for the Kirklin Clinic before the committee.
Sam continued to advocate for city and state tax incentives to equalize investment opportunities in historic properties with those that had long favored new construction. In the 1990s, he pioneered the use of façade easements (that preserve historic structures by restricting changes to the exteriors or facades of the buildings) to help provide favorable incentives to renovate large residential and commercial projects. The easements are legally binding and enforced by the agency holding the easement. Thanks to Sam, Birmingham Historical Society received 11 easements and gifts of funds to monitor the conservation of these properties in perpetuity. Funds received formed the initial corpus of the Society’s endowment.
Also in the 1990s, Sam led the five-year long Mayor’s Committee for the Preservation of Vulcan whose members were Society Trustees. With the 120,000 ton cast-iron statue disintegrating and the Mayor and business community reluctant to commit funds, the committee explored methods to fix and pay for the project. The committee brought the conservator of large statues for the National Park Service in Washington came to appraise the situation, worked with Robinson Iron (the firm that had recast the iron on the Zinszer Building who with the conservator would later lead the dismantling, conservation, and reassembly of the statute), created the framework for public-private management of the site (that became today’s Vulcan Park Foundation that operates the site for the City), and pioneered the highly successful offering of educational opportunities at the park and along the mineral railroad during the Olympic summer of 1996. When the committee disbanded, the Society continued the public relations campaign to save the City’s symbol.
Sam also provided leadership to St. Andrews Episcopal Church on Southside and to Grace Episcopal Church in Woodlawn.
While stationed with the army in England following his college years, this Southern gentleman from Decatur, Alabama, learned of the Irish Georgian Society, Ireland’s agency for promoting and protecting this nation’s heritage, historic gardens, and decorative arts. Carol McCroarty, his future wife, was working for the Society. These Irish associations nurtured his passion for preserving Birmingham heritage.
Sam loved to collect, preferably antiques of Georgian provenance. He also loved to entertain and was the consummate host at his homes in Forest Park and later at “Woodside,” his home in Belle Mina, Alabama. In his living rooms, a silver galley tray remained set with Irish crystal and Irish whiskeys, a ready welcome for family and friends. True leaders serve others, and Sam was ever ready to serve not only at home, but in his community. And he did.
~ Marjorie White, Director, Birmingham Historical Society
Sam had a particular passion for historic preservation even in his personal life and lived in an historic home named Woodside in Belle Mina, Alabama until a tragic fire destroyed it.
