Greater Birmingham

This article refers to the 1910 annexation campaign, for the general term see Birmingham Metropolitan Area.

The Greater Birmingham campaign was a movement which led to the annexation of several surrounding municipalities into Birmingham's corporate limits, taking effect on January 1, 1910.

Efforts to bring neighboring communities and municipalities into Birmingham began in earnest in 1898, led by city boosters who wanted to trumpet the city's growth to potential investors and businesses. A similar effort in 1889 had succeeded in bringing thousands of residents within the city limits, but 20,000 more were still then living in communities just outside the city. Helped by the growth of streetcars and other means of travel, these suburbs were the fastest-growing residential areas during the 1890s, frustrating advocates for Birmingham's growth.

An editorial in the October 14, 1900 Birmingham Age-Herald lamented that "the city stands before the world belittled by its cramped confines." Under the Alabama Constitution of 1901, the only means for expanding the city's chartered limits was through the Alabama Legislature. A body sympathetic to the needs of the state's economic engine approved a bill in 1909 that increased the city's area from 3 to 48 square miles, stretching about 14 miles from Ensley in the west to East Lake in the east and occupying the entire 5-mile wide urbanized strip in Jones Valley north of Red Mountain.

The annexation more than doubled Birmingham's population, estimated at 45,000 in 1909 to 132,685 counted in a Census Jubilee held in November 1910. With the newly-increased population, Birmingham immediately became the third-largest city in the former Confederate states. Because of the annexations, the actual 82% rate of growth in the district between 1900 and 1910 was inflated to a more spectacular 245% for Birmingham itself. The effect in the national press was immediate as journalists referred to the city as a "fast growing metropolis" in extolling the industrial capital of the New South.

Many of the newly-annexed municipalities vocally opposed the measure to no avail. Newly-incorporated cities like Avondale, Woodlawn, North Birmingham and Highland turned over their city hall buildings, public works and police departments to the city of Birmingham grudgingly.

Another immediate effect of the annexation was to double the number of voting wards in the city from 8 to 16, thereby increasing the membership of the Birmingham Board of Aldermen to 32. A parallel campaign to change the city's form of government to a three-member Birmingham City Commission was passed in 1911.

Annexed communities

section                                  1909 pop est

Birmingham (in corporate limits)          | 45,000
Avondale (incorporated)                   |  4,000
Woodlawn (incorporated)                   |  3,750
East Lake (incorporated)                  |  3,500
North Birmingham (incorporated)           |  3,500
West End (incorporated)                   |  1,000
Pratt City (incorporated)                 |  7,000
Ensley (incorporated)                     |  6,000
Wylam (incorporated)                      |  2,000
East Birmingham (not incorporated)        |  1,000
Kingston (not incorporated)               |  1,000
Elyton, Smithfield, Powderly (not inc)    |  4,500
Thomas (not incorporated)                 |  1,500
Gate City, Irondale (not inc)             |  2,500
Sayreton (not incorporated)               |  2,500
Lewisburg (not incorporated)              |  1,000
Clifton (not incorporated)                |  1,000
Total                                     | 90,750

References

• Harris, Carl V. (1977) Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921. Twentieth-Century America Series. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.