Southside Branch Library
The Southside Branch Library (or Birmingham Public Library Southside Branch) is a branch of the Birmingham Public Library located at 1814 11th Avenue South on the small triangular block south of 10th Court South between the Southside Post Office and Southside Baptist Church at 19th Street South.
The original library serving the area was established in 1945 as the Thomas Duke Parke Memorial Library in the former Thomas Parke residence on the same site. Parke, a pediatrician and co-founder of Children's Hospital, and his wife, Amy, left the property, along with an endowment, to the city for use as a library.
Ten years later, with funding from the Parkes' endowment, the branch, then called the Parke Memorial Branch Library, moved into a $90,000 purpose-built building at the same site. It was dedicated on October 9, 1955. That building was demolished for the current, larger library which opened on March 17, 1996.
The sculpture "The Guardian" by Joe Theo Waldrop was dedicated at the library on April 29, 1984, and was re-installed outside the main entrance of the current building on 11th Avenue in 1996.
Head librarians
References
- Birmingham Public Library Board (1945) "A Tribute to Dr. and Mrs. Parke on the Opening of the Thomas Duke Parke Memorial Library."
External links
- Birmingham Public Library Southside Branch web page
- 1958 photograph of the Southside Branch Library in the Alabama Media Group Collection at the Alabama Department of Archives and History