Talk:Oporto-Madrid Boulevard

North and South

Upon this article's creation, we had existing pages linking to Oporto-Madrid Boulevard North and South as different articles. Because the North portion seems rather small compared to the South one and also because of the shared history of the renaming, I just went ahead and left it as one article. Those existing links were made redirects. We can split the article later if we want. On the other hand, because of the long length of the road, I only split the locations down by communities instead of all the way to neighborhoods. --Lkseitz 09:07, 16 May 2014 (PDT)

Oporto Avenue

The 1962 article referenced consistently calls it "Oporto Avenue," not "Oporto Road." A quick search of the Birmingham Public Library digital collections reveals other documents, including city engineering dept. reports, that use the Oporto Avenue name. I don't know if some sources are wrong, the road was never consistently named, or if the road was renamed from Road to Avenue at some point. --Lkseitz 14:10, 19 May 2014 (PDT)

How two parallel roads became one

I'll write this up formally for the article later tonight or maybe over the weekend, but here's what happened. All roads are first listed in west-to-east order.

North of Red Gap, Madrid Avenue began as part of a planned subdivision around 1911 as Saunders Avenue/Avenue I. Oporto Avenue was part of the same plan as Avenue K. This is the existing Oporto Avenue. (Naples Avenue was Weller Avenue/Avenue J.) The roads were named Madrid, Naples, and Oporto Avenues by 1914. (All north-south roads in the area were avenues named after large European cities.)

South of Red Gap was a small neighborhood (I'm guessing from the streets it was residential) where the nearly north-south Jefferson and Porter Avenues were the two longest roads and the other streets just connected the two. Jefferson stretched all the way south to Irondale Road (a.k.a. Oxmoor-Irondale Road), now Montevallo Road in Mountain Brook. (It's possible, but unclear, Jefferson Avenue was named for the nearby east-west Jefferson Avenue in Irondale (now 2nd Avenue North Irondale). Maybe there was some thought they'd be connected? I didn't go back to see if I could determine which Jefferson came first, as it wasn't relevant to the Oporto Avenue/Road issue.) It's unclear if Jefferson crossed the many railroad tracks in Red Gap until about 1921.

Madrid's path all the way to Georgia Road isn't well defined until around 1932. London Avenue/Kimberly Avenue, one block west of Madrid, also extended to Georgia Road, but Madrid had the advantage of also intersecting 77th Street directly, so that's probably why it became the major thoroughfare. And so it remained until after World War II that if you wanted to get from 77th Street to Montclair, you took Madrid to Georgia Road, then jogged east to Jefferson and took it further south. (The 1952 map (link below) shows both the roads south of Red Gap crossing the tracks, but it's the only one to indicate this, so I'm guessing it's an error.)

Then, sometime between 1944 and 1952/53, they renamed Jefferson and Porter as Naples and Oporto, respectively. The roads remained completely separate segments, but shared their names. (Judging from Homewood's renaming all its downtown streets to match B'ham's grid around the same time period, this road renaming may have been a popular movement at the time.) Also during this time, Porter/Oporto somehow became the road that extended to Montevallo instead of Jefferson. I don't believe the road's path changed significantly, just where it tied in to the south side of the neighborhood.

A little later, in the mid-1950s, it appears the neighborhood was removed. Oporto Avenue (formerly Porter) was the only road left south of Red Gap. Except the portion that crossed the tracks was still named Naples Avenue. It appears that by the late 1950s, that portion was also renamed Oporto Avenue. Then, in the 1960s, the current viaduct over the tracks was constructed and Madrid rerouted to feed directly into it, setting the stage to rename the whole section (plus 77th Street) Oporto-Madrid Boulevard. Thus two parallel roads became one (but the original two-block section of Oporto Avenue remains, just to be confusing.) The U.S.G.S. quadrangles show the road as Oporto Road, not Avenue, but it seems most local sources were calling the section from Red Gap south Oporto Avenue.

Maps: 1911, 1914, 1921, 1932, 1932 alt., 1944, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1957, 1957 alt., 1959. --Lkseitz (talk) 13:08, 7 January 2016 (PST)