Thursday, May 1, 2014

Birmingham Photo of the Day (8): Alabama Theatre, 1927





Here's another photo of the Alabama Theatre from the Birmingham Public Library's Digital Collections

This view shows the theater under construction in 1927; signs in the window give a December 26 opening date. Also shown are more of those neat cars they had in the past!




Monday, April 28, 2014

Alabama Libraries in 1851


[This post is one of a series I'm doing on the history of libraries and books in Alabama.]


In 1851 Charles Coffin Jewett published one of the early inventories of public libraries in the United States. At the time Jewett was Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; he moved to the Boston Public Library as Superintendent in 1858 and worked there until his death a decade later. 

The report, Notices of Public Libraries in the United States of America, was issued as an appendix to the 1850 report of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents. In some 200 pages Jewett gives state-by-state library listings and descriptions. Listings are organized by town within each state. In his “Preliminary Remarks”, Jewett tells the reader:




As might be expected, Jewett found through his tedious methods of circulars and private correspondence only a few libraries in Alabama at that time. His first entry for the state, under “La Grange”, says simply “College Library—3,000 vols.” He refers of course to LaGrange College, the state’s first chartered college established in 1830; the site is located eight miles southeast of Muscle Shoals. The college was burned in April 1863.

From that brief entry Jewett moves on to Howard College, founded in Marion in 1842, with a library containing 1500 volumes. “It is opened once a week for half an hour”, he notes. Organized by Alabama Baptists and chartered in 1841, Howard was moved to the East Lake area of Birmingham in 1887 and finally to its present location in Homewood in 1957 and renamed Samford University in 1965.

In Mobile Jewett located the library of the Franklin Society, founded in January 1835. “The library contains 1,454 volumes, with a few coins and maps….The library and reading-room are open daily for the use of members of the society and subscribers to the reading-room.”
           
 In Spring Hill Jewett found the state’s second largest library of the time, that of the Catholic college holding 4,000 volumes. The school was founded twenty years before Jewett’s report was published. He gives no other library details.




The original main building of Spring Hill College, built in 1831. 
Source: Wikipedia

Jewett’s longest entry is the last, as expected the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa with 7,123 volumes. This figure included the 4,500 volumes in the “Rotundo” and two student libraries containing 2,623 volumes. He notes an annual circulation of some 800 volumes, a “stated annual appropriation of $200” and two extra $500 appropriations within the past five years.  “The library is opened twice a week, and kept open about an hour each time.”




The Rotunda in 1859, one of seven UA buildings existing when the school opened in 1831.
Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Jewett also mentions the two library catalogs that had been prepared by Richard Furman and Wilson G. Richardson. He notes that Richardson’s effort “is on the plan of the catalogue of Brown University Library.” In 1841 Jewett became librarian at Brown, reorganized its library and published a catalog in two parts: an alphabetical description of items and an alphabetical index of subjects. 

Thus Jewett found six “public libraries” in Alabama ca. 1850; he seems to have missed the one in Huntsville and probably others. By way of comparison, he found eight in Georgia, four in Mississippi and three in Florida.

Jewett knew this effort was only the beginning:




Charles Coffin Jewett [1816-1868]
Source: Wikipedia 
 




This document is available at Google Books



ALABAMA LIBRARIES PRIOR TO WORLD WAR I: A CHRONOLOGY IN PROGRESS





            

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Birmingham Photo of the Day (7): Alabama Theatre, 1959






This photo of the Alabama Theatre on July 15, 1959 is from the Birmingham Public Library's Digital Collections

I wonder what kind of business Goldstein's Furs did during an Alabama summer. The film people are lining up to see was Audrey Hepburn's latest, The Nun's Story





Thursday, April 24, 2014

Monday, April 21, 2014

Dispensary at the Edgewater Mine, July 1946

Large coal mining operations were often self-contained communities in the U.S., and the Edgewater Mine in western Jefferson County was no exception.

According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad [TCI] entered the Birmingham area in late 1886. "In addition to [its] Tennessee holdings, TCI now owned 76,000 acres of coal land, 460 coke ovens, two blast furnaces, and 13,000 acres of land that included the Red Mountain ore seam. The company moved its headquarters to Birmingham in 1895." In other words, TCI was a mighty player in central Alabama and would remain so for decades. In this area we are living with the results today.

The current unincorporated community of Edgewater is a perfect example. Located north of Pleasant Grove, Edgewater began as a TCI coal mine opened in 1911. At first state convict lease system prisoners were used, and their mined coal was hauled by railroad to the coke ovens at the company's Ensley Works. 

In about a year TCI ended its use of prisoners, hoping to attract better, more dedicated workers and their families. A modern village soon opened near the mine that included houses, schools, churches, recreation facilities and modern sanitation methods. TCI trucks picked up garbage on a regular basis. Recreational activities included baseball leagues and regular community dances. Segregated facilities were created for black and white workers and families. 

This kind of corporate paternalism was common in other industries as well. My maternal grandfather, John Miller Shores, was a longtime Methodist minister in the North Alabama Conference. One of his postings over the years was the Methodist Church associated with the giant Avondale Mill textile operation in Sylacauga. 

The Edgewater Mine thrived during the World Wars, but changes continued to occur. The schools were sold to Jefferson County in 1932. At its height the mine employed over 1200 workers and produced more than 800,000 tons of coal a year. The mine closed in 1962.

The BhamWiki web site gives many more details on the mining operation and the community that survives today. 

Below are some photographs from the U.S. National Archives. The first is the company store at Edgewater. The rest are views outside and inside of the dispensary, which provided medical care, supplies and drugs onsite. 

In 1913 TCI hired Dr. Lloyd Noland to run its health and sanitation efforts, which became elaborate at the mines and resulted in the building of the hospital in Fairfield eventually named after him. 








Edgewater Mine Company Store in July, 1946. The photo is from the U.S. National Archives.


The exterior and interior photos below of the dispensary at Edgewater are also from the U.S. National Archives











































Friday, April 18, 2014

Alabama Ruin: Clanton Drive-In Theater

In August 2012 my son Amos IV and I were tooling down I-65 South headed for Montgomery to see some historic sights there. Not long after we left Pelham, we were slowed to a crawl by a traffic backup and decided to use one of the Clanton exits to detour. 

We hadn't gone far when we passed this Great Alabama Ruin, the former Clanton Drive-In, located at 3404 7th Street North. We looked at each other, both saying wow!, so I turned around. The photos below were taken by my son and reveal what we saw on that hot summer day. 

The Cinema Treasures web site notes the drive-in opened sometime before 1955, was owned by a B. Clark and had 416 spaces for cars. That number would provide a lot of eyeballs to watch such late 1950's movies as Some Like It Hot [1959] a comedy with Marilyn Monroe; The Big Country [1958] a Western with Gregory Peck; the Ten Commandments [1956] with Charlton Heston; and Alfred Hitchcock's thriller North By Northwest [1959] with Cary Grant. We can also hope that in the 1960's such classics as Beach Blanket Bingo [1965] with Annette and Frankie also appeared on that giant screen.  

At the time this theater opened, the only places to watch a movie on a big screen were probably way up in big bad Birmingham or way down in Montgomery. After all, the only Over-the-Mountain community developed at that time was Vestavia. Wonder when the first movie theater opened there? Small town movie theaters were not unknown back in the day, however. 

No indication is given on the Cinema Treasures site as to when the drive-in closed. At some point S&H Mobile Homes opened there, and it closed in 2010. The only signs left of the original use are the screen, the empty marquee and the flat field for cars. We can only imagine the building that housed projection equipment, the snack bar and restrooms, and all of the poles for the little sound boxes to be hung on car windows.   

Some 86 open movie theaters in Alabama are currently listed on the Cinema Treasures site; a few are drive-ins. The site also lists 361 closed theaters in the state; many of those are drive-ins. That number includes the Whitesburg Drive-In in Huntsville, opened in 1949, closed in 1979, and since demolished. At least the people who watched drive-in movies in Clanton still have something tangible left in addition to their memories.

On his LiveJournal site, J.J. MacCrimmon provides a number of photographs of this drive-in that he took in 2011.

Anyone having more info about this site should feel free to comment below!













There I am, probably pointing out the obvious.








Here I am again, trying to grin in the heat.


Once a field of Tinseltown dreams, long ago and far away.





Another view of that field of dreams.
















Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Birmingham Photo of the Day (5): Downtown, 1939






This 1939 photo of the south side of the 1800 block of 4th Avenue North is from the Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections. Businesses include Boston Sample Shoes on the left, National Lunch in the middle and the Roosevelt Hotel on the far right.