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[[Image:Tutwiler Hotel 1914.jpg|right|thumb| | :''This article is about the original Tutwiler Hotel in use from 1914 to 1972. For the current hotel using that name, see [[Hampton Inn-Tutwiler]]'' | ||
The | [[Image:Tutwiler Hotel 1914.jpg|right|thumb|375px|The Tutwiler in the 1920s]] | ||
The '''Tutwiler Hotel''' was a 13-story, 425-room brick and limestone luxury hotel on the southeast corner of [[5th Avenue North]] and [[20th Street North|20th Street]] in downtown [[Birmingham]]. It was constructed in [[1914]] by a group of local investors. It closed in [[1972]] and was demolished in [[1974]], Another [[Tutwiler Hotel (1986)|Tutwiler Hotel]], named for the original, opened in [[1986]] in the former [[Ridgely Apartments]]. | |||
== Conception == | == Conception == | ||
In [[1913]], [[George Gordon Crawford]], president of [[Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company]], complained to [[Robert Jemison | In [[1913]], [[George Gordon Crawford]], president of [[Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company]], complained to [[Robert Jemison Jr]] that when friends and officers from [[U.S. Steel]] came into town they had no decent place to stay. Jemison soon learned that [[Harvey G. Woodward]] was hoping to sell a lot on the southeast corner of 5th Avenue North and 20th Street, a lot originally bought to prevent the construction of a new office building that would have competed with Woodward’s downtown properties. Immediately, Jemison challenged Crawford to join him in building a luxury hotel in Birmingham. | ||
Jemison | While Crawford assumed the duties of president of the new company, Jemison and [[W. P. G. Harding]], president of the [[First National Bank]], set out to secure the mortgage for the hotel. At Harding’s suggestion, they approached Major [[Edward M. Tutwiler]], who had just sold his [[Tutwiler Coal, Coke, & Iron Company]] to the [[Birmingham Coal & Iron Company]] the year before, and was about to embark on a tour of South America with his wife. | ||
Major Tutwiler tentatively agreed to underwrite the first mortgage bonds. When he returned from South America, he learned from Jemison that the option had been exercised and New York architect William Lee Stoddard was already working on plans for the new hotel in collaboration with local architect [[William Leslie Welton]]. He and hotelier [[Robert Meyer]] visited the vanguard of "metropolitan hotels" in other cities to study their best features and worst mistakes. The result blended ideas from the Slaten Hotel in Cincinnati, the Blackston Hotel in Chicago, and the Vanderbilt and McAlpin Hotels in New York City. Stoddard and Welton's design was for a large, square block with a central courtyard. The lower floors were clad in limestone and provided with large, multi-story arched windows with deep balconies centered on each street facade. A full balustrade separated this ornate base from the relatively unadorned brick walls of the residential floors above. The penthouse was again clad in limestone and crowned with a deep, ornate cornice. The interior featured what the ''[[Birmingham Age-Herald]]'' proclaimed the "Biggest Lobby in America", furnished with heavy "Elizabethan" furniture and dressed with marble walls. The main dining room was decorated in the "Adam style", while the ballroom featured decor in the manner of Louis XVI. The ground floor of the courtyard was glassed in and planted as an "orangerie". | |||
Congratulating Jemison for their progress, he suggested that, if the other investors were agreeable, the hotel be named "The Tutwiler". They were, and construction proceeded. Jemison recruited the Wells Brothers Construction Company of New York City to oversee the building efforts. | |||
According to one story, the building's excavation revealed an [[Underground river|underground stream]], requiring the addition of large steel beams spanning across the opening at enormous extra cost. In order to raise the entire $1.6 million needed to complete the building, the officers took out second and third mortgages - even while the specter of war was looming. The United Hotels Company of Niagara Falls agreed to lease and operate the hotel if it were completely finished out and serviced by heat and power. United spent another $400,000 furnishing the hotel before it opened. | |||
According to one story, the building's excavation revealed an [[Underground river|underground stream]], requiring the addition of large steel beams spanning across the opening at enormous extra cost. In order to raise the entire $1.6 million needed to complete the building, the officers took out second and third mortgages - even while the specter of war was looming. United spent another $400,000 furnishing the hotel. | |||
== Opening == | == Opening == | ||
[[File:Tutwiler luggage label.jpg|left|225px]] | |||
The new hotel opened its doors in [[June 15]], [[1914]]. Easter lilies filled the lobbies, and leading citizens turned out in formal attire to see the newly proclaimed “Grand Dame of Southern Hotels.” Promotional brochures announced that the Tutwiler “[e]mbodies every advanced thought [that] architectural ingenuity, aided by skilled labor, has so far devised… consisting of 325 rooms, equipped with bath or shower, fire alarms and telephone.” Rates ranged from $1.50 for a single room without bath to $6.00 for a double room with bath. 70 chefs were hired to staff the hotel kitchen. | The new hotel opened its doors in [[June 15]], [[1914]]. Easter lilies filled the lobbies, and leading citizens turned out in formal attire to see the newly proclaimed “Grand Dame of Southern Hotels.” Promotional brochures announced that the Tutwiler “[e]mbodies every advanced thought [that] architectural ingenuity, aided by skilled labor, has so far devised… consisting of 325 rooms, equipped with bath or shower, fire alarms and telephone.” Rates ranged from $1.50 for a single room without bath to $6.00 for a double room with bath. 70 chefs were hired to staff the hotel kitchen. | ||
For the next 60 years, The Tutwiler was a hub of Birmingham business, social, and political circles, playing host to hundreds of celebrities, politicians, and dignitaries. A reviewing stand for the largest annual [[Veterans Day Parade]] in the country was erected outside the Tutwiler. President [[1921 Presidential visit|Warren G. Harding]] presided over a luncheon in his honor at the hotel during Birmingham’s [[Semicentennial of Birmingham|semicentennial]] in [[1921]]. Charles Lindbergh held a [[1927]] press conference in its Louis XIV Suite. In [[1937]] actress [[Tallulah Bankhead]] threw a rousing post-wedding party in the '''Contintental Room''', which for decades hosted lunches and dinners with live big-band music six days a week. | For the next 60 years, The Tutwiler was a hub of Birmingham business, social, and political circles, playing host to hundreds of celebrities, politicians, and dignitaries. A reviewing stand for the largest annual [[Veterans Day Parade]] in the country was erected outside the Tutwiler. President [[1921 Presidential visit|Warren G. Harding]] presided over a luncheon in his honor at the hotel during Birmingham’s [[Semicentennial of Birmingham|semicentennial]] in [[1921]]. Charles Lindbergh held a [[1927]] press conference in its Louis XIV Suite. In [[1937]] actress [[Tallulah Bankhead]] threw a rousing post-wedding party in the '''Contintental Room''', which for decades hosted lunches and dinners with live big-band music six days a week. | ||
Over the years, distinguished guests included Roy Rogers and Dale Evans | In the 1920s, numerous organizations used rooms at the Tutwiler for their meetings, including the [[Birmingham Automobile Club]], the [[Rotary Club of Birmingham]], and the [[Old Colony Club]]. The lobby bristled with small shops and offices, including a [[Western Union]] telegraph office, the [[Tutwiler Cigar Stand]], [[Tutwiler Barber Shop]], [[Tutwiler Flower Shop]], [[Tutwiler Drug Store]], [[Bonner De Luxe Tours]], a beauty parlor, stenographer, and various physicians' practices. Novelist [[Jack Bethea]] hanged himself in a room at the Tutwiler in July, [[1928]]. | ||
===Dinkler=== | |||
By [[1926]] the Dinkler Hotel Company was operating the Tutwiler and Redmont Hotels. That year they installed a $15,000 "smoke consuming device" for the hotel, which had previously been noted for the, "large black clouds of smoke...seen belching forth from the tall chimney of the hotel." The company also invested in elevator improvements to reduce wait times. | |||
<!--In [[1929]] United dropped the Tutwiler lease and the hotel was operated by Lewis J. Dinkler (and later by Carling Dinkler) of Atlanta as the '''Dinkler-Tutwiler Hotel'''. He marketed it alongside his other properties, the Ansley Hotel in Atlanta, the Jefferson Davis Hotel in Montgomery, and the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Nashville.-->[[Coleman Hudson]] stayed on as manager through [[1937]]. | |||
Room 212 of the Tutwiler served as the headquarters of the [[Southern Conference for Human Welfare]] (SCHW). The organization's [[1938 Southern Conference for Human Welfare meeting|inaugural convention]], attended by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was hosted there in [[1938]]. | |||
Over the years, distinguished guests included Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Rocky Marciano, Babe Ruth, opera star Mary Garden, Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, Walter Pidgeon, Dr Norman Vincent Peale, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. | |||
On [[July 1]], [[1942]] the Tutwiler hosted Birmingham's $2 million [[War Bond Breakfast]], organized by [[Harold Blach]] as a model for bond-sales programs in other cities. | |||
In [[1945]] Birmingham's [[Realty Mortgage Company]] announced that it intended to buy the hotel and add a 168-room motel and swimming pool on the adjacent lot. They later withdrew the offer. | |||
In [[1948]] [[Pat Patton|Ira M. "Pat" Patton]] was manager of the hotel. In September of that year a fire started in the bedding in room 315. Buddy Lewis of Memphis, a scout for the St Louis Cardinals was taken to [[Jefferson Hospital]] to be treated for smoke inhalation and burns. Though no other rooms were damaged, four engine companies responded. | |||
In [[ | |||
In [[1951]] a proposal to extend the hotel's dining room over the sidewalk was rejected. [[Birmingham City Commission]]er [[Bull Connor]] cited a city ordinance against erecting posts on the sidewalks. In the 1950s the hotel advertised musical guests in its "beautiful piano lounge" and suggesting dining at "The Town and Country" restaurant. | |||
In | |||
The hotel closed for good just five years later, on [[April 1]], [[1972]]. | The hotel was purchased by J. Henry Hoffman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in February [[1956]] for $1.25 million, but continued to operate as part of the Dinkler chain. In [[1964]] the hotel's lounge was dubbed '''The Red Garter''', featuring the [[Jack Einhorn|Jack Einhorn and Anthony]] duo. A smaller cocktail bar called '''The Jewel Box''' also connected to the hotel lobby. | ||
===Great Southern=== | |||
[[File:1968 Tutwiler brochure cover.jpg|left|thumb|275px|Cover of a 1968 promotional pamphlet for the Tutwiler Hotel]] | |||
On [[June 15]] [[1967]], exactly fifty-three years after its grand opening, the Tutwiler Hotel was sold by the Birmingham-Hoffman Corporation to the local [[Great Southern Investment Corporation]] for an estimated $1.7 million. | |||
[[James P. Paris]], head of the investment group, announced that Great Southern would spend up to $1 million to renovate all guest rooms, banquet spaces, cocktail lounges, restaurants, and lobbies in the building. The refurbished property reopened on [[June 28]], [[1968]] with [[Joseph Lampe]], a holdover from the Dinkler Corporations, as hotel president. After remodeling, the hotel featured a total of 400 guest rooms ranging from singles to 2-bedroom suites. All rooms were provided with television sets (black & white in standard rooms, color in "superior" rooms and suites). The Tutwiler offered eight banqueting rooms capable of holding 500 guests each. Four of them could be combined into a grand ball room. Another 24 meeting rooms hosted groups of 10-40 persons. | |||
The [[Regency Room]] ballroom, managed by [[Aleck Gulas]], was marketed as an alternative to [[The Club]] and featured touring musical acts and comedians, open to guests with free parking and no cover. The Jewel Box and Grill Room also reopened with the hotel. | |||
==Closure and Demolition== | |||
The hotel closed for good just five years later, on [[April 1]], [[1972]]. Clem Long Inc. held a liquidation sale of furnishings, carpets, light fixtures, kitchen equipment, finishes, bath fixtures and linens in June. | |||
[[File:1974 tutwiler implosion.jpg|right|thumb|325px|Implosion of the Tutwiler. ''Birmingham News'' photo by Ralph Farrow.]] | |||
[[Image:Tutwiler_monument.JPG|right|thumb|325px|Monument outside [[Regions Plaza]]]] | |||
The property was purchased by the [[Exchange Security Bank]], which was set to construct a new [[Regions Plaza|First Alabama Bank building]] there. The hotel was scheduled to be brought down by explosive charges on the morning of [[January 26]], [[1974]], a Sunday. The charges, placed by the [[T. M. Burgin Demolition Co.]], succeeded in dropping the 20th Street facade, but left a large section of the south wing standing. A second series of blasts twisted that section in on itself. The company decided to complete the remainder of the demolition by conventional means. Special care was taken to prevent damage to the [[La Paree Restaurant]], which, as Burgin described it, was "snuggled up to the Tutwiler like a puppy to its mother." The deadline for clearing the site for construction was [[May 17]]. | |||
More than 2,000 tons of what Burgin described as "virgin" steel were removed from the site and sold to [[ACIPCO]] to make pipe. He sold the outside balcony railings to a family from [[Gadsden]] and a local contractor. He placed a 10x14 foot mirror from the main lobby at his own home in [[Vandiver]]. A leaded-glass ceiling was uncovered, hidden above two later ceilings in the hotel's barber shop. Workers salvaged more than 1,000 hardwood doors with brass knobs bearing the Tutwiler logo. Effort was made to preserve large sculpted heads from the exterior, but they were damaged later in transport. | |||
==Reincarnation== | ==Reincarnation== | ||
| Line 38: | Line 63: | ||
==References== | ==References== | ||
* "Tutwiler will get $1 million face lifting by new owners." (June 1967) | * "[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/112237320/smoke-consumer-draws-attention/ Smoke Consumer Draws Attention]" (January 17, 1926) {{BN}}, p. 24 | ||
* Bruer, Frank (June 1967) "Tutwiler Hotel has sparkled 53 years." | * "Tutwiler will get $1 million face lifting by new owners." (June 1967) {{BN}} | ||
* [http://www. | * Bruer, Frank (June 1967) "Tutwiler Hotel has sparkled 53 years." {{BN}} | ||
* Bryant, Walter (November 27, 1975) "Underground river helped shape city". | * Reeves, Garland (June 1974) "[http://www.birminghamrewound.com/features/1974-06.htm Much Salvaged: Tutwiler Hotel is gone, but it still lives on]" {{BN}} - via [[Birmingham Rewound]] | ||
* Bryant, Walter (November 27, 1975) "Underground river helped shape city". {{BN}} | |||
* Bates, Kelsey Scouten (February 2008) "Birmingham's chefs offer an inspired menu for President Harding's visit in 1921." ''Birmingham'' Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 2. pp. 214-5 | * Bates, Kelsey Scouten (February 2008) "Birmingham's chefs offer an inspired menu for President Harding's visit in 1921." ''Birmingham'' Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 2. pp. 214-5 | ||
* {{Fazio-2010}} | |||
==External links== | ==External links== | ||
* [http://bplonline.cdmhost.com/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/p4017coll6&CISOPTR=1407&REC=14 1955 photograph of the Tutwiler Hotel] by Charles Preston at the Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections | * [http://bplonline.cdmhost.com/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/p4017coll6&CISOPTR=1407&REC=14 1955 photograph of the Tutwiler Hotel] by Charles Preston at the Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections | ||
* [http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=197079 Tutwiler Hotel, Birmingham] on Emporis.com | |||
* [http://thetutwilerhotel.com/home.html The Tutwiler] website for the current Tutwiler Hotel | * [http://thetutwilerhotel.com/home.html The Tutwiler] website for the current Tutwiler Hotel | ||
[[Category:Tutwiler Hotel|*]] | |||
[[Category:Former hotels]] | [[Category:Former hotels]] | ||
[[Category:1914 buildings]] | [[Category:1914 buildings]] | ||
[[Category: | [[Category:1974 demolitions]] | ||
[[Category:13-story buildings]] | |||
[[Category:Jemison developments]] | |||
[[Category:William Welton buildings]] | [[Category:William Welton buildings]] | ||
[[Category:20th Street North]] | [[Category:20th Street North]] | ||
[[Category:5th Avenue North]] | [[Category:5th Avenue North]] | ||
[[Category:1914 establishments]] | |||
[[Category:1972 disestablishments]] | |||
Latest revision as of 08:30, 28 September 2023
- This article is about the original Tutwiler Hotel in use from 1914 to 1972. For the current hotel using that name, see Hampton Inn-Tutwiler
The Tutwiler Hotel was a 13-story, 425-room brick and limestone luxury hotel on the southeast corner of 5th Avenue North and 20th Street in downtown Birmingham. It was constructed in 1914 by a group of local investors. It closed in 1972 and was demolished in 1974, Another Tutwiler Hotel, named for the original, opened in 1986 in the former Ridgely Apartments.
Conception
In 1913, George Gordon Crawford, president of Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, complained to Robert Jemison Jr that when friends and officers from U.S. Steel came into town they had no decent place to stay. Jemison soon learned that Harvey G. Woodward was hoping to sell a lot on the southeast corner of 5th Avenue North and 20th Street, a lot originally bought to prevent the construction of a new office building that would have competed with Woodward’s downtown properties. Immediately, Jemison challenged Crawford to join him in building a luxury hotel in Birmingham.
While Crawford assumed the duties of president of the new company, Jemison and W. P. G. Harding, president of the First National Bank, set out to secure the mortgage for the hotel. At Harding’s suggestion, they approached Major Edward M. Tutwiler, who had just sold his Tutwiler Coal, Coke, & Iron Company to the Birmingham Coal & Iron Company the year before, and was about to embark on a tour of South America with his wife.
Major Tutwiler tentatively agreed to underwrite the first mortgage bonds. When he returned from South America, he learned from Jemison that the option had been exercised and New York architect William Lee Stoddard was already working on plans for the new hotel in collaboration with local architect William Leslie Welton. He and hotelier Robert Meyer visited the vanguard of "metropolitan hotels" in other cities to study their best features and worst mistakes. The result blended ideas from the Slaten Hotel in Cincinnati, the Blackston Hotel in Chicago, and the Vanderbilt and McAlpin Hotels in New York City. Stoddard and Welton's design was for a large, square block with a central courtyard. The lower floors were clad in limestone and provided with large, multi-story arched windows with deep balconies centered on each street facade. A full balustrade separated this ornate base from the relatively unadorned brick walls of the residential floors above. The penthouse was again clad in limestone and crowned with a deep, ornate cornice. The interior featured what the Birmingham Age-Herald proclaimed the "Biggest Lobby in America", furnished with heavy "Elizabethan" furniture and dressed with marble walls. The main dining room was decorated in the "Adam style", while the ballroom featured decor in the manner of Louis XVI. The ground floor of the courtyard was glassed in and planted as an "orangerie".
Congratulating Jemison for their progress, he suggested that, if the other investors were agreeable, the hotel be named "The Tutwiler". They were, and construction proceeded. Jemison recruited the Wells Brothers Construction Company of New York City to oversee the building efforts.
According to one story, the building's excavation revealed an underground stream, requiring the addition of large steel beams spanning across the opening at enormous extra cost. In order to raise the entire $1.6 million needed to complete the building, the officers took out second and third mortgages - even while the specter of war was looming. The United Hotels Company of Niagara Falls agreed to lease and operate the hotel if it were completely finished out and serviced by heat and power. United spent another $400,000 furnishing the hotel before it opened.
Opening
The new hotel opened its doors in June 15, 1914. Easter lilies filled the lobbies, and leading citizens turned out in formal attire to see the newly proclaimed “Grand Dame of Southern Hotels.” Promotional brochures announced that the Tutwiler “[e]mbodies every advanced thought [that] architectural ingenuity, aided by skilled labor, has so far devised… consisting of 325 rooms, equipped with bath or shower, fire alarms and telephone.” Rates ranged from $1.50 for a single room without bath to $6.00 for a double room with bath. 70 chefs were hired to staff the hotel kitchen.
For the next 60 years, The Tutwiler was a hub of Birmingham business, social, and political circles, playing host to hundreds of celebrities, politicians, and dignitaries. A reviewing stand for the largest annual Veterans Day Parade in the country was erected outside the Tutwiler. President Warren G. Harding presided over a luncheon in his honor at the hotel during Birmingham’s semicentennial in 1921. Charles Lindbergh held a 1927 press conference in its Louis XIV Suite. In 1937 actress Tallulah Bankhead threw a rousing post-wedding party in the Contintental Room, which for decades hosted lunches and dinners with live big-band music six days a week.
In the 1920s, numerous organizations used rooms at the Tutwiler for their meetings, including the Birmingham Automobile Club, the Rotary Club of Birmingham, and the Old Colony Club. The lobby bristled with small shops and offices, including a Western Union telegraph office, the Tutwiler Cigar Stand, Tutwiler Barber Shop, Tutwiler Flower Shop, Tutwiler Drug Store, Bonner De Luxe Tours, a beauty parlor, stenographer, and various physicians' practices. Novelist Jack Bethea hanged himself in a room at the Tutwiler in July, 1928.
Dinkler
By 1926 the Dinkler Hotel Company was operating the Tutwiler and Redmont Hotels. That year they installed a $15,000 "smoke consuming device" for the hotel, which had previously been noted for the, "large black clouds of smoke...seen belching forth from the tall chimney of the hotel." The company also invested in elevator improvements to reduce wait times.
Coleman Hudson stayed on as manager through 1937.
Room 212 of the Tutwiler served as the headquarters of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW). The organization's inaugural convention, attended by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was hosted there in 1938.
Over the years, distinguished guests included Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Rocky Marciano, Babe Ruth, opera star Mary Garden, Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, Walter Pidgeon, Dr Norman Vincent Peale, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
On July 1, 1942 the Tutwiler hosted Birmingham's $2 million War Bond Breakfast, organized by Harold Blach as a model for bond-sales programs in other cities.
In 1945 Birmingham's Realty Mortgage Company announced that it intended to buy the hotel and add a 168-room motel and swimming pool on the adjacent lot. They later withdrew the offer.
In 1948 Ira M. "Pat" Patton was manager of the hotel. In September of that year a fire started in the bedding in room 315. Buddy Lewis of Memphis, a scout for the St Louis Cardinals was taken to Jefferson Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation and burns. Though no other rooms were damaged, four engine companies responded.
In 1951 a proposal to extend the hotel's dining room over the sidewalk was rejected. Birmingham City Commissioner Bull Connor cited a city ordinance against erecting posts on the sidewalks. In the 1950s the hotel advertised musical guests in its "beautiful piano lounge" and suggesting dining at "The Town and Country" restaurant.
The hotel was purchased by J. Henry Hoffman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in February 1956 for $1.25 million, but continued to operate as part of the Dinkler chain. In 1964 the hotel's lounge was dubbed The Red Garter, featuring the Jack Einhorn and Anthony duo. A smaller cocktail bar called The Jewel Box also connected to the hotel lobby.
Great Southern
On June 15 1967, exactly fifty-three years after its grand opening, the Tutwiler Hotel was sold by the Birmingham-Hoffman Corporation to the local Great Southern Investment Corporation for an estimated $1.7 million.
James P. Paris, head of the investment group, announced that Great Southern would spend up to $1 million to renovate all guest rooms, banquet spaces, cocktail lounges, restaurants, and lobbies in the building. The refurbished property reopened on June 28, 1968 with Joseph Lampe, a holdover from the Dinkler Corporations, as hotel president. After remodeling, the hotel featured a total of 400 guest rooms ranging from singles to 2-bedroom suites. All rooms were provided with television sets (black & white in standard rooms, color in "superior" rooms and suites). The Tutwiler offered eight banqueting rooms capable of holding 500 guests each. Four of them could be combined into a grand ball room. Another 24 meeting rooms hosted groups of 10-40 persons.
The Regency Room ballroom, managed by Aleck Gulas, was marketed as an alternative to The Club and featured touring musical acts and comedians, open to guests with free parking and no cover. The Jewel Box and Grill Room also reopened with the hotel.
Closure and Demolition
The hotel closed for good just five years later, on April 1, 1972. Clem Long Inc. held a liquidation sale of furnishings, carpets, light fixtures, kitchen equipment, finishes, bath fixtures and linens in June.
The property was purchased by the Exchange Security Bank, which was set to construct a new First Alabama Bank building there. The hotel was scheduled to be brought down by explosive charges on the morning of January 26, 1974, a Sunday. The charges, placed by the T. M. Burgin Demolition Co., succeeded in dropping the 20th Street facade, but left a large section of the south wing standing. A second series of blasts twisted that section in on itself. The company decided to complete the remainder of the demolition by conventional means. Special care was taken to prevent damage to the La Paree Restaurant, which, as Burgin described it, was "snuggled up to the Tutwiler like a puppy to its mother." The deadline for clearing the site for construction was May 17.
More than 2,000 tons of what Burgin described as "virgin" steel were removed from the site and sold to ACIPCO to make pipe. He sold the outside balcony railings to a family from Gadsden and a local contractor. He placed a 10x14 foot mirror from the main lobby at his own home in Vandiver. A leaded-glass ceiling was uncovered, hidden above two later ceilings in the hotel's barber shop. Workers salvaged more than 1,000 hardwood doors with brass knobs bearing the Tutwiler logo. Effort was made to preserve large sculpted heads from the exterior, but they were damaged later in transport.
Reincarnation
In 1985 it was decided to convert the Ridgely Apartments building, which had also been built by Robert Jemison Jr. in 1913 and was owned by the Tutwiler family, into a new luxury hotel named after the original. In 1986 renovations of the building were completed and the new Tutwiler opened to guests.
References
- "Smoke Consumer Draws Attention" (January 17, 1926) The Birmingham News, p. 24
- "Tutwiler will get $1 million face lifting by new owners." (June 1967) The Birmingham News
- Bruer, Frank (June 1967) "Tutwiler Hotel has sparkled 53 years." The Birmingham News
- Reeves, Garland (June 1974) "Much Salvaged: Tutwiler Hotel is gone, but it still lives on" The Birmingham News - via Birmingham Rewound
- Bryant, Walter (November 27, 1975) "Underground river helped shape city". The Birmingham News
- Bates, Kelsey Scouten (February 2008) "Birmingham's chefs offer an inspired menu for President Harding's visit in 1921." Birmingham Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 2. pp. 214-5
- Fazio, Michael W. (2010) Landscape of Transformations: Architecture and Birmingham, Alabama. Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press ISBN 9781572336872
External links
- 1955 photograph of the Tutwiler Hotel by Charles Preston at the Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections
- Tutwiler Hotel, Birmingham on Emporis.com
- The Tutwiler website for the current Tutwiler Hotel