Birmingham Postcard: The Redmont Hotel

As its BhamWiki entry notes, the Redmont Hotel opened in May 1925 with 250 rooms in the 14-story building. The Redmont is the oldest hotel still operating in the city, and today is part of the Hilton Curio Collection. 

The back of this card tells us "The Redmont, Corner 5th Ave. and 21st St., Birmingham's newest hotel, 225 Rooms / 225 Baths, Circulating Ice Water. Direction / Dinkler Hotel Company, Dispensers of True-Southern Hospitality." Thus it was printed soon after the Redmont opened.

Louis Jacob Dinkler, a Nashville native, opened his first hotel in Macon, Georgia, in 1914. Other Dinkler hotels in Alabama included the original Tutwiler, opened in 1914 and which Dinkler was operating by 1926; and the Jefferson Davis in Montgomery. The Tutwiler was demolished in 1974. At one time the chain advertised it offered 3000 rooms around the South.

The BhamWiki resource has an extensive history of the Redmont, including the November 1, 1934, shootout between robbers and Birmingham police. On December 8, 1986, the Birmingham Post-Herald published an article by Mitch Mendelson about the first-class hotels for travelers in the city, the Redmont and the Wynfrey.

Hotel Redmont postcard ca. 1920

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives & History

The Empty Project: Alabama (1)

"I can't live without empty chairs."
-Karl Kraus

For some time now I've been photographing scenes without people inside the "built environment", as they say. Make of these photos what you will.

What is emptiness, anyway??

UAB Highlands, August 11, 2023

Bessemer Civic Center, July 8, 2023

UAB Callahan Eye Hospital fourth floor corridor
June 29, 2023

UAB Whitaker Clinic, 3rd floor Dermatology

7:30 am October 2020

My mother's living room in Huntsville just after delivery of some flowers

October 2020

Alabama Photo: Huntsville Female College

In my never-ending project to look at every single image on Alabama Mosaic, I came across the one below recently. The photograph shows a number of young women standing in front of what is labelled the Huntsville Female College. 

The Methodist Church opened the school in 1851. The institution was one of several for girls that opened in the city before the Civil War. Sara McKay's School was founded in 1819, the year Alabama became a state. The Monte Sano Female Seminary followed on February 18, 1830; it closed in December 1833. Soon after the Huntsville Female Seminary opened on Randolph Street in January 5, 1831, and lasted until 1875 when it closed due to financial problems. 

As seen in the photograph, the Female College's building was three stories high and featured dumb waiters for wood, coal and sweeping. Each floor had fresh water, and gas fixtures in the rooms. The school was also located on Randolph Avenue. 

On Tuesday morning, January 8, 1895, the building caught fire and burned through most of the afternoon. Some of the girls' trunks as well as 12 of 20 pianos were saved. Insurance paid over $29,000 but much more would have been needed to rebuild. Rev. A.B. Jones, the principal, led a fundraising effort but it was unsuccessful. The lot was eventually subdivided and cottages built.

Below are some other materials related to the college. Several post-Civil War catalogs for the college can be found here. 

Huntsville Female College students, late 19th century

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History

Memphis Daily Appeal August 12, 1880

Huntsville Female College

This engraving and the advertisement below can be found in Huntsville Directory: City Guide and Business Mirror 1859-1860. 

Memphis Daily Appeal August 26, 1870

Many other newspaper advertisements can be found at the Library of Congress' Chronicling America. 

Commencement program cover, 1891

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History

Source: Historical Marker Database

Punt, Bama, Punt! Auburn Does It 17-16

As the most recent one demonstrated, the annual Iron Bowl football contest between Auburn University and the University of Alabama can have all kinds of craziness. That was certainly true for the 1972 contest, the immortal "Punt, Bama, Punt!" game. As my brother Richard and I continue to clean out mom and dad's  house in Huntsville, we keep encountering all sorts of interesting things, and this blog post is about one of them. 

The sound recording seen below was mailed to Auburn University alumni in 1973 as a fund raiser for the university's foundation. In the game played December 2, 1972, Alabama was undefeated, ranked 2nd in the nation and a two-touchdown  favorite over Auburn. With less than 10 minutes left in the game, the score was  16-3 with Alabama leading when the Crimson Tide had to punt.  Auburn player Bill Newton blocked and teammate David Langner ran the ball back for a touchdown. Several minutes later, Alabama had to punt again, Newton again blocked it, and Langner again returned it for a touchdown. Langner intercepted an Alabama pass to seal Auburn's victory.  See the Wikipedia entry "Punt Bama Punt" for more details about the game. This item has a portion of the official Auburn Football Network broadcast with Gary Sanders and Gusty Yearout.

Alabama Book: End of the Rainbow

I've written several blog posts in the past few years about Alabama-related books that have become victims of the downsizing of my personal library. That effort continues at greater speed, and I came across this title just the other day. So here we are.

I'm not sure why or where I bought this book, which has been on the shelves for a long time. For many years I bought all sorts of stuff related to Alabama, and I guess the phrase "grew up in Montgomery, Alabama" caught my eye. 

This title is the author's 1981 memoir about her addiction to prescription medications. Mary Ann Crenshaw was born in Montgomery on April 18, 1929, and headed north "to conquer New York" after graduation from Vanderbilt University in 1951. Beginning in 1959 she worked for several years as a fashion writer at Vogue magazine and then as fashion coordinator at Ohrbach's department store. After that position, she worked for over a decade as fashion and beauty reporter at the New York Times. 

Crenshaw overcame her addiction and documented her struggle in this book. During her life she published several other books, including The Natural Way to Super Beauty in 1974. She eventually left New York for Santa Fe, where she operated a public relations firm and collected Native and Outsider art. 

In this memoir Crenshaw devoted only a brief chapter to her youth and college experiences; the pages can be read below. Interestingly, I don't think she mentions Montgomery at all and refers to Nashville but not Vanderbilt. I wonder why the book jacket even says "grew up in Montgomery, Alabama" instead of something more generic like "grew up in the South."

Mary Ann Crenshaw died on September 18, 2018, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Montgomery. 

Auburn vs. Birmingham-Southern in 1938

In 1938 Auburn [then formally known as Alabama Polytechnic Institute, but seldom called that] and Birmingham-Southern College met in the first football game of the season for both teams. The contest took place on September 23 at Crampton Bowl in Montgomery. Auburn managed to win 14-0 with a "late spurt" as the article below describes it.

That article was written by Bill Rollow for the Montgomery Advertiser. Also below is an excerpt declaring that "Auburn's play was unimpressive" and noting the team will have to greatly improve before the next game against Tulane. Birmingham-Southern had been a three touchdown underdog.

The teams would finish that season with similar records. Under fifth-year coach Jack Meagher the Tigers had a record of 4-5-1. The Panthers coach Jenks Gillem completed his eleventh season at 4-5. 

The Panthers home stadium was Legion Field, but they only played two games there that year. Some of their other games were played in New Orleans, Memphis, Mobile and Gadsden. Auburn played Tulane in New Orleans, and other teams in Houston, Atlanta and Jacksonville, Florida. They lost to Villanova in Philadelphia. Two games were played at Crampton Bowl, and Auburn defeated LSU at Legion Field. 

Source: Auburn University Libraries Digital Collections

Harold McInnish, center, Birmingham-Southern 

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History

Lewis Holliday, end, Birmingham-Southern. He did not start, but according to the newspaper account below he did play. 

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History 

Rollow notes later in the article that Auburn attempted no passes in the first half and "did not open up with anything but country store football." Their fanciest play in that half was four laterals after an interception that gained about a yard. 

Montgomery Advertiser, Saturday 24 September 1938, written by Bill Rollow

Larger version can be found at the source

Source: Newpapers.com

Tennant S. McWilliams, PhD [1943-2023]

I wanted to note the passing on October 23 of UAB Professor Emeritus and historian Tennant S. McWilliams, who served as Dean of the School of Social Behavior and Sciences from 1990 until 2007. He graduated from Birmingham-Southern in 1965, then earned a master's at the University of Alabama in 1967 and a PhD from the University of Georgia in 1973. The following year he began his career at UAB, which lasted until retirement in 2010. During those years he had not only served as a dean, but in several other administrative posts at the university. 

He published several books; three of them are noted below. I've found the UAB history very useful.  

Published by the University of Alabama Press in September 2023

University of Alabama Press, 2008

University of Alabama Press, 1978

This pamphlet was published in 1978.

• Hannis Taylor: New Southerner as American. University of Alabama Press, 1978.
• The New South Faces the World: Foreign Affairs and the Southern Sense of Self. Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Paperback 2006.
• New Lights in the Valley: The Emergence of UAB. University of Alabama Press, 2008.
• The Chaplain’s Conflict: Good and Evil in a War Hospital. Texas A&M University Press, 2012.
• Dixie Heretic: The Civil Rights Odyssey of Renwick C. Kennedy. Forthcoming. University of Alabama Press, 2023.

Alabama at the Louisiana Book Festival, 2023

On October 28 Dianne and I attended the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge. Our son Amos appeared on two panels as noted below in support of both his books, the new novel Petrochemical Nocturne and his 2018 collection of stories, Nobody Knows How It Got This Good. We were also at the 2018 festival shortly after his first book was published. 

As you can see from the schedule below, this book festival is a one-day event packed with panels of authors, demonstrations of various sorts, and a massive book tent where signings and lots of purchases take place. Oh, and food trucks. Despite pretty warm weather, the event drew hordes of people, kids, and dogs.

The festival also attracts authors of all sort of books--fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoirs, children's, cookbooks, etc. Naturally, Amos wasn't the only author with Alabama connections. Others included Kari Frederickson, a history professor at the University of Alabama and author of Deep South Dynasty: The Bankheads of Alabama, and prolific novelist Carolyn Haines, who was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame in 2020. Novelist and freelance author Terah Shelton Harris and poet Rodney Jones also appeared. 

You can read more about Amos and his writing here.  

Copies of Petrochemical Nocturne be purchased from Livingston Press, Amazon, or Bookshop,org, which supports independent bookstores. 

Copies of Nobody Knows can be purchased from Livingston Press, Amazon, or Bookshop,org, which supports independent bookstores.

The book wall in the Louisiana State Library goes up each year; these photos from the festival's Instagram account show it in progress. Amos' book can be seen on the lower right, second row up.

These two photos were taken by AJWIV

The Louisiana State Capitol is an imposing building.

Photo by AJWIV

The steps up to the capitol's main entrance features each state and its year of statehood.

Photo by AJWIV

Many of the panels took place in the House meeting rooms in the basement.

We could watch lots of traffic along the mighty Mississippi from our hotel room.