Progress Club
The Progress Club was a private social club at 2200 Ridge Park Avenue. It was established in 1920 by members of the conservative Jewish community, largely from Eastern European backgrounds.
Its membership policies were considered less exclusive than the already-established Phoenix Club, which had been founded in the 1880s by members of the German-speaking reformed Jewish community centered around Temple Emanu-El.
The club became dormant during the Great Depression. In 1944 members of the same community established the Fairmont Country Club, again following the pattern of the reform community's Hillcrest Golf & Country Club. The two merged in 1968 to form the Pine Tree Country Club, which built a new facility off of Grants Mill Road.
The site of the former Progress Club was redeveloped as the Ridge Park office complex, and now houses a parking deck behind the American Cancer Society's Joe Lee Griffin Hope Lodge.
References
- Elovitz, Mark H. (1974) A Century of Jewish Life in Dixie: The Birmingham Experience. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press ISBN 0817369015