Research Bridge
The Veterans Administration Research Wing commonly known as the Research Bridge is an 8-story building connecting the Lyons Harrison Research Building to the Birmingham VA Medical Center by bridging across 19th Street South near 7th Avenue South.
The bridge, dedicated on September 22, 1967, marked the first time that a Veterans Administration hospital was physically joined to a civilian hospital. Joseph Volker lobbied the U.S. Congress to approve the sharing of space, which greatly benefited operations of the VA center and boosted the research capabilities of the university hospital.
The exterior curtain wall of the "bridge" wing originally contained uniform opaque panels with short clerestory windows above, but some of those panels have since been replaced with glass.