“The greatest city in Alabam’”: Songs about Birmingham

            If the discussion turns to popular songs about American cities, Birmingham, Alabama, probably doesn’t come to mind first. Instead, classics like “New York, New York,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” might be the ones people name. Yet cities all over the world have their own songs—“Tijuana Jail” by the Kingston Trio, anyone? Or maybe “La Rumba de Barcelona” by Manu Chao or “One Night in Bangkok” by Murray Head? And our city is no exception.

            One of the earliest such songs is the 1916 “If Ever I Get Back to Birmingham (To the Girl Who Waits for Me)” by composers James Alexander Brennan and O.E. Story.  Both men were from Boston and may never have been south of the Mason-Dixon Line, much less to Birmingham. Songwriters of this era often incorporated images and scenes of a romantic, pastoral, yet mysterious and exotic South that never really existed. Two 1918 songs by Brennan were “When It's Cotton Pickin' Time In Tennessee” and “When The Steamboats On The Swanee Whistle Rag-time.”

Cover of sheet music for "If I Ever Get Back to Birmingham" (1916)
Source: BhamWiki.com

            The lyrics of the song describe the singer’s sadness and longing at his distance from his “girl” and his lack of money for the $19.60 fare to reach her. The only image specific to Birmingham is that of the railroad that will take him there if he could buy a ticket. He does declare that “I will settle down in Alabam’” if he  gets to the city. The piece was intended for a vocalist with piano accompaniment.

            Over the next two decades many Birmingham songs made their way into popular culture. “Birmingham Jail” has the music of traditional American folk song “Down in the Valley” and lyrics by a guitar player named Jimmie Tarlton. He claimed to have written them while actually in the jail on a moonshine charge. “Write me a letter, send it by mail,” the singer tells his Bessie, “Send it in care of Birmingham Jail.”

            In November 1927 Tarlton and Tom Darby recorded the song in Atlanta for Columbia Records; over 200,000 copies were quickly sold. The pair produced two follow-up songs with less success, “Birmingham Jail No. 2” and “New Birmingham Jail.” The original version has been recorded by numerous artists such as Eddy Arnold, Peggy Lee, Slim Whitman, Lead Belly, and as recently as 1993 by Jerry Garcia.

            Another song close to local culture is “Mining Camp Blues”, recorded in February 1925 by Trixie Smith and Her Down Home Syncopators for Paramount Records. Smith, who had attended Selma University, personalized her lyrics and referred to her father “Diggin’ and a haulin’, haulin’ that Birmingham coal.” Like so many blues, this one sings of death: “It was late one evening. I was standing at that mine./ Foreman said my daddy had gone down for his last, last time.” Smith herself is “nearly dying, from these mining camp blues.”

            The tradition of local artists writing about their city continued in “Birmingham Boys,” recorded in 1926 by the Birmingham Jubilee Singers. In this case the lyrics by Charles Bridge announce a much more upbeat attitude and the pride as “Birmingham boys we” who have moved from the country to the bustling city.

            This fervent connection to Birmingham continues today. On her 2006 CD My Glass Eye city native Beth Thornley’s “Birmingham” has a litany of city details meaningful to her because “it’s in the blood and in the mud/ down in Birmingham.”

            Other songs from the 1920s include Duke Ellington’s “Birmingham Breakdown” (1926) and Charlie Johnson’s “Birmingham Black Bottom” (1927). The great Ethel Waters performed “Birmingham Bertha” in the 1929 film musical On with the Show.

            Western movie star and singer Gene Autry is not usually associated with Birmingham or even the South, but early in his career in November 1931 he recorded “Birmingham Daddy.” Autry sings as a man whose “baby turned me down” and he’s leaving town to find a new “mama.” “If love was liquor, and I could drink/” he declares, “I’d be drunk all the time, I’d go back in town, to Birmingham.”

            “Birmingham Bounce” by Sid “Hardrock” Gunter and his band is sometimes cited as the first rock and roll song. The piece was recorded in the city in 1950 and became an area hit later covered by the likes of Lionel Hampton, Tommy Dorsey and others.

Cover for the music for "Birmingham Bounce" by Hardrock Gunter

Source: BhamWiki.com

            Several country songs about our city have appeared in recent decades. In her 1973 “Birmingham Mistake”, Sammi Smith sings about a child abandoned in the city. The previous year Lester Flatt released “Backin’ to Birmingham” that tells the story of a truck driver whose rig’s forward gear doesn’t work, so he has to drive the load in reverse all the way from Chicago.

            Two versions of “Paint Me a Birmingham” by Tracy Lawrence and Ken Mellens came out in 2003. The narrator asks an artist to paint his memories of the plans he had made with a past love. Two years later Cledus T. Judd made fun of the song with his recording “Bake Me A Country Ham.”

            Many other well-known artists have written about Birmingham, some in recent years. There is bandleader Louis Jordan’s “Fat Sam from Birmingham”, John Hiatt’s “Train to Birmingham”, Ani DiFranco’s “Hello Birmingham”, John Mellencamp’s “When Jesus Left Birmingham” and Randy Newman’s “Birmingham” (“The greatest city in Alabam’”).

            Two famous city natives have written well-known material about their hometown. Avant garde jazz great Sun Ra released The Magic City album in 1966; the title piece is a 27-minute improvisation by his orchestra. Sun Ra’s cover art invokes the demolished Terminal Station and it’s Magic City sign.

Sun Ra performing at The Nick in August 1988. Photo by Craig Legg
Source: BhamWiki.com 

 In a completely different style is Emmylou Harris’ “Boulder to Birmingham” in which she declares, “I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham/ If I thought I could see, I could see your face.” 

Emmylou Harris performing in San Francisco, 2005
Source: Wikipedia

            As you might expect, several significant songs about the city reflect the turmoil of the 1960s. Richard Farina’s “Birmingham Sunday” has been recorded by Joan Baez. Similar songs include Harry Belafonte and R.B. Greaves’ “Birmingham, Alabama”, Phil Ochs’ “Talking Birmingham Jam” and John Lee Hooker’s angry “Birmingham Blues.”

            Another large category includes songs by well-known artists that mention the city. Groups and individuals ranging from Lynard Skynard and the Rolling Stones to Chuck Berry, Tom Waits (two songs!), Talking Heads, Sheryl Crow, Bob Seger, Little Richard and Tori Amos have given shout-outs to Birmingham. All in all, the universe of songs about the city is none too shabby.

            Perhaps the single most familiar tune about Birmingham is “Tuxedo Junction.” Written by native Erskine Hawkins and named after the streetcar junction in the Ensley neighborhood, the song was recorded by his orchestra in 1939, sold a million copies and reached the #7 position on the pop charts. The following year Glen Miller and his orchestra covered the song, rode it to #1 and made it a big band jazz standard. The vocal group Manhattan Transfer also had success with it in a 1975 recording; I enjoyed their live version a few years ago at a concert at UAB's Alys Stephens Center. Hawkins felt the music invoked the thriving entertainment scene around that junction in Ensley during the 1930s..

            I have included a generous selection of Birmingham songs here, but even more have been written and performed by artists local and national. The BhamWiki.com site has a helpful “List of Songs about Birmingham” that will give you more leads. Local author Burgin Mathews covers many in depth in his 2011 booklet, Thirty Birmingham Songs: A Guide. Happy listening!

           

YouTube & other videos

“Birmingham” by Randy Newman, covers by Taylor Hicks and others
http://bit.ly/15n0N1g

“Boulder to Birmingham” by EmmyLou Harris—several versions
http://bit.ly/1c6AlKZ

“Birmingham Bounce” by Hardrock Gunter and covered by others
http://bit.ly/1dfeswn

“Tuxedo Junction” by Erskine Hawkins, covers by Manhattan Transfer, Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller and many others
http://bit.ly/1dfeC6N

“Mining Camp Blues” by Trixie Smith & the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avzi-os7Az4

“Birmingham Bertha” by Ethel Waters
From the 1929 film musical On With the Show
http://www.20sjazz.com/videos/singers/birmingham-bertha.html

“Birmingham Breakdown” by Duke Ellington
Performed at a 2013 jazz festival in Connecticut by the Wolverine Jazz Band
http://www.20sjazz.com/videos/tradition-lives-on/birmingham-breakdown.html

This post previously appeared at DiscoverBirmingham.org in August 2013.

Birmingham Photo of the Day (13): U.S. Weather Bureau Station in 1908

 In 1870 Congress had established a weather service under the U.S. Army Signal Corps. In 1890 the service moved to the civilian Department of Agriculture and to the Commerce Department in 1940. Today the National Weather Service is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Official weather observations began in April, 1882, in the Birmingham area, just a few years after the city was founded. Until September 14, 1895, records were not continuous, done in cooperation with railroads such as L&N and often used volunteers. At this time the office was located in the Walker and Jordan Building on First Avenue North; instruments were on the roof of the building.

A full-time facility began operation in July 1903, and the office and instruments were moved to the Title Guarantee Building at 21st Street and 3rd Avenue North. The first official Weather Bureau observation was made at 8:00 a.m. on September 1. W.A. Mitchell noted that "The day began clear and unusually cool...Maximum temperature for the day was 79.0 degrees. Fresh north wind." By January 1904 the station was recording a storm that turned out to be tornadoes with damage about a mile north of the station.

In 1907 a building for the service was constructed at the corner of 12th Avenue [then Alta or Elta] and 13th Street on a hill north of downtown. The service remained in this building until December 1, 1945, when Weather Bureau activities were consolidated at the Birmingham airport. 

A history of the National Weather Service in Birmingham is available here.

U.S. Weather Bureau Station 

 From the book Views of Birmingham, Alabama published in 1908

Mom Makes the Front Page in 1949

Before she and dad married, my mother Carolyn Shores did some modelling for Avondale Mills. Along with other young women, she appeared at various fashion shows and in newspaper advertisements. The photo below shows her on the left along with others at a show in early June, 1949. She was 19 years old.

That particular show took place in the Continental Room, a lunch, dinner and event space in Birmingham's Tutwiler Hotel. Back in August, 1937 that same room was used for the wedding reception of famed Alabama actress Tallulah Bankhead and actor John Emery after the marriage took place at her father's home in Jasper.

As noted on the masthead, the Avondale Sun was a newspaper for employees of all Avondale Mills and their families. Mom was the youngest child of Methodist minister John Miller Shores, and family members turn up in the paper several times in various contexts. I found an item in a 1934 issue noting mom among other children who had perfect attendance at kindergarten for the month of September. I've also found a notice of a luncheon hosted at the parsonage in Sylacauga by my grandmother Tempe, and various notes about aunts Heth and Marjorie. 

The Comer family had expanded the company into Sylacauga with the giant Eva Jane mill in 1913. The plant was named after the wife of founder B.B. Comer. In addition to the plant itself, the company also supported schools, churches and stores for employees. Unable to compete with overseas competition, the company and all its operations closed in 2006. The empty Eva Jane building burned in 2011.

The entire run of the Avondale Sun from 1924 until 2006 is available in Birmingham Public Library's Digital Collections.

Mom's modelling career didn't last long. After marriage, she and dad raised my brother Richard and me. Some forty years ago she began painting, first in oils but soon changing to watercolors. She is still at it; her art can be found at her web site and for sale on ArtFire and Etsy. She's on Pinterest too!

Birmingham Photo of the Day (12): Birmingham Theatre in the 1940s

This photograph by Oscar V. Hunt is taken from the Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections . BPL's record for this photograph notes the marquee as proclaiming the Birmingham Theatre "the largest and finest colored theatre in the entire South, 1st run pictures and stage shows exclusively for colored people."

According to the BhamWiki site, this building at 17th Street and 3rd Avenue North was constructed in the 1890s as a public auditorium. The Birmingham Theatre opened there in 1946 but was unsuccessful; the building was demolished in 1950.

O.V. Hunt photographed scenes in Birmingham for many years; he died in 1962. BPL has many of his photographs in their collections. Alabama Mosaic indexes more than 200 of them.

Who Are Birmingham Natives Sonia Sanchez and Margaret Walker?

            A number of black women born in Alabama have achieved great success or sometimes great controversy in their lives and careers. Coretta Scott King from Marion is one who comes immediately to mind. Lesser known in this state is Marva Collins who was born in Monroeville but who went on to great achievement as an educator in Chicago. She has published several books based on her experiences in the Windy City and was the subject of a 1981 made-for-tv movie in which she was played by Cicely Tyson.

            Birmingham has its share of individuals in this group: Condolezza Rice (academic, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State), Angela Davis (political activist, academic), Vonetta Flowers (Olympic gold medalist), Odetta (singer) and Nell Carter (actress and singer). Two well-known writers who are Birmingham natives are Margaret Walker and Sonia Sanchez.

            Margaret Abigail Walker was born on July 7, 1915, the daughter of a Methodist minister, Sigismund Walker, and his music teacher wife Marion. Raised in Mississippi and New Orleans, she graduated from Northwestern University in Chicago in 1935. The following year she began work with the Federal Writers’ Project, a federal program designed to help authors during the Great Depression. She earned a creative writing master’s degree from the University of Iowa in 1940. Her thesis, a collection of poems, was published as For My People and won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Award.

            In 1943 she married Firnist James Alexander, an interior designer; by 1949 the family had settled in Mississippi, where Walker had accepted a faculty position at Jackson State College. In 1968 she founded what is now the Margaret Walker Center, an archive and museum devoted to the study of African-American history and culture. She retired in 1979 and died in 1998.

            Margaret Walker published other collections of poetry as well as non-fiction, but her best known work is probably her only novel, Jubilee. Published in 1966, the novel grew from stories about her great-grandmother, Margaret Brown. Set in Greenville, Alabama, the novel follows the story of a slave woman into Reconstruction. More about Walker can be found in her entry in the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

            Sonia Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver in Birmingham on September 9, 1934, and attended Tuggle Elementary School. In 1943 she went to live with her father, sister and stepmother in Harlem. She graduated from New York City’s Hunter College in 1955. She later studied poetry under Louise Bogan at New York University. Sanchez has retained the name of her first husband although that marriage did not last. A second marriage to poet Etheridge Knight also ended in divorce.

            Over the course of her still-active career Sanchez has published a number of poetry books as well as plays and children’s books. She taught at eight different universities before her retirement from Temple University in Philadelphia in 1999. She has read her work and lectured at more than 500 colleges in the U.S. and other countries. In addition to other awards, she received the Harper Lee Award for Alabama's Distinguished Writer of the Year in 2004. You can learn more about her life and work at her website and her entry in the Encyclopedia of Alabama. 

 The photographs of Margaret Walker and Sonia Sanchez are taken from their entries at BhamWiki.

 A version of this piece appeared at DiscoverBirmingham.org in September 2013.

Birmingham's "Heaviest" Medical Block

Between 1902 and 1912 four of the tallest buildings in the Southeast at that time were constructed at the corner of 20th Street and 1st Avenue North in Birmingham. The Woodward, Brown Mark, Empire and American Trust and Savings Bank buildings were anointed as the “Heaviest Corner in the South” by Jemison Magazine and over the years the word “South” has often been replaced by “World” or “Earth.” In 1985 the location was recognized by installation of a historical marker and listing in the National Register of Historic Places. 

The heaviest corner on “earth” in 2005

Source: BhamWiki

The UAB Medical Center has what might be called “Birmingham’s Heaviest Medical Block” bounded by 19th and 20th Streets and 6th and 7th Avenues South. Buildings once and now at this spot have been the sites of much of the city’s medical history.

The oldest of these structures and one still standing is now known as “Old Hillman”. The four-story stone and brick Hillman Hospital was dedicated in July, 1903 and named after local benefactor Thomas Hillman, President of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. The hospital was constructed on lots 1-6 of the block, purchased from John S. Cox. He had bought the land from the Elyton Land Company in 1877 for $250. A Victorian house on the property was used as the hospital’s first nursing dormitory. 

The Hillman Hospital complex, ca. 1929. The original structure on the right was erected in 1902 and the annex, in the middle, was added in 1913. On the left is the 1928 addition, or “new” Hillman.

Source: Birmingham Public Library

Hillman Hospital 
 From the book Views of Birmingham, Alabama published in 1908

Thomas T. Hillman

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama  

Efforts to organize a charity hospital for the city had begun in 1884, and Hillman’s donations had helped fund several locations, including a 100-bed facility that burned in 1894. Hillman required that his support pay for wards for both white and black patients. Hillman Hospital was chartered by the state legislature in 1897 and operated by a Board of Lady Managers—wives of local businessmen, a group involved from the beginning as the Daughters of United Charity.

The four floors and basement were crowded with various facilities, including offices, reception rooms, a laundry, store rooms, and boiler and fuel room for the steam heat. Twelve private rooms and four adult and one child wards occupied most of the first and second floors. The third floor held a surgical amphitheater that could hold up to 80 students, sterilizing and ether rooms, two private operating rooms and more private rooms. The fourth floor held the kitchen (with dumb waiter access to other floors), nurses’ dormitory rooms, a dining hall and additional private rooms.

By 1924 over 4600 patients a year were treated at Hillman. Financial difficulties had continued, and in 1907 the land and building were sold to the Jefferson County Board of Revenue. An annex built in 1913 failed to relieve the overcrowding of the 90 beds Dr. Will Mayo had noted on his visit in 1911. Finally the “new” Hillman Building opened in 1928, followed eleven years later by a five story outpatient clinic.

Hillman Outpatients Clinics building, demolished in 1964

Source: Holmes, History of the University of Alabama Hospitals [1974]

Those seats in the main surgical amphitheater of Hillman Hospital were filled by faculty and students from the Birmingham Medical College. The school was a proprietary college owned by nine prominent Birmingham physicians and opened in October 1894. The college and the Birmingham Dental College were first located in a five-story building on 21st Street North originally occupied by the Lunsford Hotel. The school had electric lighting, lecture rooms, several laboratories and operated a free dispensary. Students were also exposed to patients at the city charity hospital, infirmaries owned by faculty members and clinics in nearby towns.

In 1902 the college constructed its new home next to Hillman Hospital and a two-story autopsy house behind it. By that time the school had 94 students who were required to study four terms instead of the original two. In 1910 the medical and dental schools merged to become the Birmingham Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical College. One of the school’s achievements was the 1899 graduation of Elizabeth White. She was the second female to graduate from an Alabama medical school, following Louisa Shepard who had graduated from the Graefenberg Medical Institute in Dadeville in the 1850s. 

Birmingham Medical College in 1912

Source: BhamWiki

Despite improvements in facilities, funding and graduation requirements, the school closed in May, 1915. Six years earlier Abraham Flexner had inspected the Birmingham school and the Medical College of Alabama in Mobile. He and his team were touring the country gathering information on all the nation’s medical schools for the American Medical Association. His 1910 report was very critical of most of those schools, including those two and others in Alabama; many schools, especially proprietary ones, closed in the next few years. The Birmingham school’s owners sold it to the University of Alabama, which operated it until the final students graduated. After a move to Tuscaloosa, the University’s Medical College of Alabama opened in Birmingham in September, 1945, using Jefferson Hospital as its base of operations.

Before that major change another building was constructed on the block in addition to the outpatient clinic already mentioned . In 1929 Hillman Hospital opened a nursing dormitory. The structure was renovated and reopened in July 1965 as the Roy R. Kracke Clinical Services Building. Dr. Kracke was the first dean of the Medical College of Alabama when it opened in Birmingham in September 1945. 

Constructed in 1928 as a student nursing dormitory for Hillman Hospital, the building was renovated and opened as the Roy R. Kracke Clinical Services Building in 1965.

Source: Holmes, History of the University of Alabama Hospitals [1974]

Roy R. Kracke, M.D. [1887-1950]

Source: National Library of Medicine/Images in the History of Medicine

By the 1930s another expansion of Hillman Hospital was desperately needed. The County Commission hired prominent local architect Charles H. McCauley to design a seven-story annex to cost $1.5 million in U.S. Public Works Administration funds. By the time the building was dedicated in December 1940, nine more floors were added at a final cost of $2.25 million.

The new hospital was state-of-the-art and known as the finest hospital in the South. Two banks of high-speed elevators carried doctors, nurses, patients and others from floor to floor. The fifth floor was a maternity ward; the seventh floor featured eleven operating rooms. Both of those floors were air conditioned. The top two floors had living space for 150 nurses and 25 interns and resident physicians. From March 1942 until April 1944 two of the floors were used for secret work by the U.S. Army Replacement and School Command. Responsible for personnel training, the unit’s headquarters had been relocated to Birmingham from Washington, D.C., to protect it from possible enemy attack.

1939 architect's rendering of Jefferson Hospital

Source: BhamWiki

Four years later the facility became the Jefferson-Hillman Hospital where the new Medical College of Alabama would soon be located. The UA Board of Trustees renamed it University Hospital in 1955 and finally Jefferson Tower in 1979. By September 2010 all inpatient activities had been relocated to the new North Pavilion hospital complex and other areas.

Since 1940 four other buildings have appeared on our particular block. Dedicated in February 1958, the Reynolds Library held the magnificent rare book collection donated by Alabama native and radiologist Lawrence Reynolds. In October 1975 the collection was moved to the new Lister Hill Library two blocks away. The Reynolds building was demolished in July 1979 to permit construction of the Center for Advanced Medical Studies. That building is now the Pittman Center, renamed to honor longtime medical school dean Dr. James A. Pittman who died earlier this year.

In December 1960 the Health Sciences Research Building opened next to what is now the Kracke Building. Six years later this facility was renamed the Lyons-Harrison Research Building to honor Drs. Champ Lyons and Tinsley Harrison, the medical school’s first chairs of the surgery and medicine departments.

The Monday Morning Quarterback Tower was dedicated on July 18, 1977, as Phase I of the Alabama Heart Hospital. Funding from the Monday Morning Quarterback Club helped with construction. The Tower was built on the site of the Birmingham Medical College and Hillman Outpatient Clinics buildings.

My guess would be that this particular block holds as much medical history as just about any similar area in the Southeast. Certainly, a significant portion of Alabama’s medical history is represented by the patients, doctors, nurses and many others who spent so much of their lives in these particular buildings.

A version of this piece appeared in the Birmingham Medical News November 2012. 

What's in those Old Birmingham Directories, Anyway?

If they survive, all sorts of ephemeral materials from the past can be of interest to historians, genealogists, entrepreneurs, and even the rest of us. Whether its pulp magazines, baseball cards, advertising flyers or directories of all types, these products can tell us something about the people who produced and used them, are listed in them and the time in which they were created.

Three such items related to Birmingham I’d like to examine in this post:  Fred W. Green’s The Birmingham Church Directory published by the Dispatch Stationary Company in 1896;  R.W A. Wilda’s  Birmingham, Alabama: Facts Worth Knowing published by the Caldwell Printing Company in September, 1889; and the 1920 telephone yellow pages for the city. The church directory and the telephone book were found online at Birmingham Public Library’s Digital Collections. The Wilda pamphlet came from the Library of Congress via Google Books.

The church directory is 80 pages long and covers various Christian denominations around the city: Baptist, Christian, Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist and the largest number, Presbyterians. One Hebrew congregation is also given. Near the end is a listing of the sixteen church locations. The listings include histories of the churches and current members. South Side Baptist, for instance, has over seven two-column pages of members.

Wilda, a native of Germany, was co-owner of a real estate firm; and his booklet is one of many issued in the city’s early days to attract investment. He includes information on Birmingham streets, water works, sewers, schools, street car lines, banks, main industries and railroads. Information on black institutions in categories such as churches and schools is included. A listing of “Buildings” street by street is useful to us in establishing what existed at the time of publication. For instance, we learn that the Caldwell Hotel was located on the corner of First Avenue and 22^nd Street.

The telephone yellow pages are a veritable snapshot of the city in 1920. The 44 pages offer categories for everything from Abstractors to X-Ray Supplies. In between are numerous doctors, lawyers, produce merchants and over two-and-a-half pages of grocers. Thirteen theaters are listed; the Lyric is the only one still surviving. Only one power company is listed; you guessed it, Alabama Power Company. The directory also includes such categories as Bath Houses, Billiard Halls and something called Ladies Toggery—as in clothing.

A fascinating aspect of the 1920 yellow pages is the lack of segregation, as the listing for “Doctors” demonstrates. Scattered among the mostly white ones are some of the city’s early black physicians.  Arthur McKinnon Brown, Logwood Ulysses Goin and Ulysses Grant Mason apparently had the same office at 310 North 18^th Street at this time. Brown and Goin had the same phone number, Main 503, but Mason’s was Main 2. Also listed is an early female physician, Annie M. Robinson. Although several women had practiced medicine in Birmingham in the 1890s and very early 20^th century, she may have been the only one in 1920.

Near the end of the telephone directory is a table giving “Long Distance Rates from Birmingham.” Most of the cities listed are in Alabama, but a few such as Washington, D.C., and Pensacola are included for comparison. The table notes that rates for over 70,000 locations are available from the long distance operator. Two basic types of calls were station-to-station, which meant the caller would talk with anyone who answered, or person-to-person.  Such calls to Hartselle, for instance, would cost 50 cents and 60 cents respectively for the “initial period”, which the table does not define.  

Publication of the two directories was supported by advertising from many local merchants scattered across lots of pages. Southside grocer J.E. Minter placed a large ad just after the title page in the church directory. Bodeker’s National Detective Agency had a full page ad in the telephone directory, which tells us that their main office in Alabama was located in the Brown-Marx building and branch offices in the state in Mobile and Montgomery. The Wilda pamphlet is “Compliments of the Bankers of Birmingham.”

These publications offer us the names of numerous individuals and their relationships with businesses and institutions. The advertisements, tables, and lists tell us much about the way life was lived in the city at the moment of publication. We can look at them now with a sense of wonder at not only how much has changed, but how much remains the same all these decades later. 

       

This piece originally appeared on the DiscoverBirmingham.org site in December 2013.