Bhamwiki:Common errors
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
This page collects common errors perpetuated by residents and the media:
- Bull Connor is often referred to as "police chief". His title was "Public Safety Commissioner" on the Birmingham City Commission, giving him influence over the police and fire departments, which he routinely abused. Birmingham's police chief during the 1960s was Jamie Moore.
- A photograph of the Watts Building (1888) with empty carriages lined up around it is sometimes purported to depict the funeral of Lou Wooster. This is unlikely as the photograph was probably made 20 years before she died and probably advertises an undertaker who leased the ground floor space. Wooster's passage to the Oak Hill Cemetery was described in contemporary accounts as "unescorted".
- It is often said that the Birmingham Terminal Station was demolished for Red Mountain Expressway. It was, in fact, demolished for a proposed federal office complex that was never realized, and the vacant site was later used for the expressway, to avoid running through Metropolitan Gardens.
- The Birmingham Zoo and Birmingham Botanical Gardens are both in the Birmingham city limits, not Mountain Brook.
- Likewise, the Barber Motorsports Park is in the city limits of Birmingham, not Leeds.
- Erskine Ramsay never offered money to parents who named their sons for him. He did once open $100 savings accounts for all the Erskines he knew of, and later sometimes sent small gifts to parents who wrote him. (See Baggett, James L. (Winter 2011) "Erskine Ramsay's many namesakes". Alabama Heritage. No. 99, pp. 8-9)
- The Vulcan Materials Company, one of the city's largest corporations, is not named for Birmingham's Vulcan, but for the Vulcan Detinning Company of Sewaren, New Jersey, which Birmingham Slag acquired in 1956.
- There is a common misperception that Legion Field is "crumbling". There were structural issues with the upper decks. The city elected to remove them rather than to repair and maintain them. The remaining stadium is structurally sound.
- The "swastikas" on the 1931 Jefferson County Courthouse should not be associated with Nazism. They were a typical geometrical flourish common in art-deco design. Germany's Nazi party had adopted a similar swastika on their flag, but it was still several years before the American public would have made any connection between the symbol and the Third Reich. Likewise it is unlikely that they were consciously adopting the design in connection with their use in Hindu, Navajo or any other religious or cultural tradition. The use on the courthouse is as "doodads", not as symbols.
