Much like St. Louis and its Woolworth Building in Grand Center, Birmingham also has a two story base that was designed with the intention of later having an upper office building added. The Florentine, which is not surprisingly in the Renaissance Revival Style, was built in 1925-27 according to designs by the architect, David O….
St. Paul Roman Catholic Cathedral, Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham was founded in 1871, and the first Catholic church, a rustic affair, was founded in 1872, so while Alabama is famous for the Southern Baptist Church, Catholicism still has a presence. The elegant church of St. Paul became the cathedral of Birmingham in 1969, after having been a co-cathedral with Mobile since 1955. Mobile,…
Vulcan, Birmingham, Alabama
Originally cast to represent Alabama’s industrial strength at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, the symbol of Birmingham is now situated high above the city on a tall plinth. Not surprisingly, the modello for the sculpture was created by an Italian sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, already…
Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, Alabama, Part Four
This will be our last day looking at Sloss Furnaces. The bridge above has an interesting story; it was built to take traffic above the giant piles of slag the furnace dumped on the ground (it’s been cleaned up, obviously). Above, as you can see, the ingots of pig iron, which is not pure enough…
Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, Alabama, Part Three
We continued on our way through the Sloss Furnaces, looking at the smokestacks for the massive boilers that burned the coke to produced the superheated temperatures that broke up the iron ore. I was curious how these molten iron cars look different compared to various parts of the country. They are of type not seen…
Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, Alabama, Part Two
We now enter the Sloss Furnaces complex, and walk around the public path on the southeast portion of the grounds. Above is a photograph of the furnaces before the 1930s refitting. We walked by a tunnel that was unfortunately flooded the day we visited, but much of the material in the smelting process moved back…
Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, Alabama, Part One
As I mentioned on our first day introducing Birmingham, all three of the components for making steel was readily available in close proximity to the city. Iron ore, in fact, could be found at Red Mountain, which is about a mile south from downtown. The iron ore was taken to blast facilities such as the…
Two Cemeteries, Birmingham, Alabama
We looked at two cemeteries in the Birmingham, the first of which was Highland Memorial Gardens, founded in 1954. This is an example of a memorial park; while there are a few headstones, the vast majority of gravestones are flush with the lawn, giving a more clean and modern look that took over cemetery design…
Bluestone Coke and Environs, Birmingham, Alabama
There is still plenty of industry alive and well in Birmingham. We went by Bluestone Coke, which manufactures one of the components of producing steel. Coke is a carbon substance created by heating coal in an airtight furnace that removes impurities. The coke that is left behind burns extremely hot, perfect for smelting iron. It…
Former Carraway Methodist Medical Center, Birmingham, Alabama
I could go into incredible detail as to why this relatively new hospital is being demolished… slowly… but I’ll spare you the whole story. Its roots date back to 1916, founded by Dr. Charles Carraway, and no doubt seeing many of the terrible injuries from the steel mills and mines. It closed in 2008, and…