Downtown Birmingham: Architectural and Historical Walking Tour Guide

Downtown Birmingham: Architectural and Historical Walking Tour Guide is a 1977 publication by the Birmingham Historical Society and the First National Bank of Birmingham. Marjorie Longenecker White served as editor, assisted by architectural editors Gray Plosser and Richard Sprague of the firm Kidd, Wheeler and Plosser. A second edition was published in 1980.

The book is divided into three walking tours, the "Old Downtown", "Old Northside and Newtown Uptown", and "The Civic Center". Each tour tells the history of a section of Birmingham primarily through buildings, both those extant and those which have been demolished.

Tours

Tour One: Old Town Downtown

• The Railroad Reservation
• The Wholesale District
• Dreams and Reality in the 1880s
• Boomtown Birmingham
• A Look Down Second
• Redevelopment, 1900-1920s
• The Early Financial Center
• Heaviest Corner on Earth
• Birmingham's Main Street
• Early Commerce
• The Retail District
• Birmingham's Broadway
• Street of Jewish Merchants
• Midtown
• Third Avenue Streetscapes
• Courthouse Square
• Constant Change
• The Design for Progress

Tour Two: The Old Northside and Newtown Uptown

• Development of the Municipal Complex
• The Once Fashionable Residential District
• Hotel Row
• Downtown Churches
• Downtown Parking
• The Black Business District
• The Jewish Neighborhood
• Town Moves North
• Reinvestment in the 1960s and 1970s

Tour Three: The Civic Center

• Pioneers of Yesterday and Today

References

• White, Marjorie Longenecker (1977) Downtown Birmingham: Architectural and Historical Walking Tour Guide. Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society.

External links

• "Downtown Birmingham: Architectural and Historical Walking Tour Guide" at archives.alabama.gov
• order book from the Birmingham Historical Society