Alabama Mineral Exposition Building

The Exposition Building seen in Henry Wellge's 1885 Bird's Eye view of Birmingham

The Mineral Exposition Building seen in John Witherspoon DuBose's 1886 The Mineral Wealth of Alabama and Birmingham Illustrated.

The Alabama Mineral Exposition Building was a temporary structure erected on the south side of Capitol Park facing 20th Street North. It was built in the 1870s to display samples of minerals extracted from throughout the Birmingham District to visitors, and thereby to encourage investments in the growth of the city and its industries. It continued to serve that purpose through the mid-1880s.

For part of 1886 the building housed students from the Powell School while a new building was constructed for them. In 1889 a proposal was made to convert the building for use as an industrial school. The Birmingham Board of Aldermen determined that it lacked the authority to commit $140 in city funds toward the project, but Mayor B. A. Thompson and Aldermen Solomon, E. L. Higdon, W. C. Rabb and J. P. Mudd each donated $10.

The structure was demolished in 1891.

In the 1950s, with the anticipated opening of the Oscar Wells Building for the Birmingham Museum of Art, there were calls to establish a new "permanent exhibition of the major products of [Birmingham's] mines, mills and factories, along with representation of its medical and research facilities."

References

• "A Better Way" (September 11, 1889) Weekly Age-Herald
• Cruikshank, George M. (1920) History of Birmingham and Its Environs (2 vol.) Chicago: Lewis Publishing.
• "From where I stand" (September 28, 1955) The Birmingham News, p. 1