UAB Tears Down the Kracke Building

Well, it wasn't Tim Riley's bar, but the Kracke Building on the UAB campus at 1922 7th Avenue South across from the dental school had quite a history just the same. The structure opened in 1929 as the dormitory for nursing students at the Hillman Hospital next door and operated as such until 1963. In July 1965 the building reopened as the Roy R. Kracke Clinical Services Building, named in honor of Dr. Roy Kracke, the first Dean of the Medical College of Alabama. Various clinics and offices were located there over the years. I think Kracke was the third oldest building on campus, behind only Old and New Hillman. 

I worked in this building for a decade. In 1983 I was hired as librarian by the medical school's Anesthesiology Department. At that time the library and the department's administrative and many faculty offices were located on the fifth floor of Kracke. In 1993 those offices and the library were relocated to the ninth floor of Jefferson Tower, which opened in 1939 as Jefferson Hospital. There I remained until retirement in December 2015.

So what are UAB's plans for this space? The Lyons-Harrison Research Building next to both Kracke and Jefferson Tower will be transformed into the Altec Styslinger Genomic Medicine and Data Sciences Building. You can see renderings of that future structure here. 

You can read one of my blog posts about past demolitions at UAB here. 

More comments are below some of the photos. 

A contemporary photo of the Kracke Building with the Pittman Center for Advanced Medical Studies [CAMS] building in the foreground and Jefferson Tower in the background. CAMS has also been demolished; it was the original home of the medical history collection donated in 1958 by Lawrence Reynolds, M.D.  

Dr. James A. Pittman [1927-2014] was Dean of the Medical School from 1973 until 1992, a period of tremendous growth for UAB and its biomedical sector. I had some interesting conversations with him over the years about medical and UAB history. 

Photo by Hanno Van Der Bul 9 March 2021

Source: Birmingham Business Journal

Kracke Clinical Services Building in the 1960's 

Source: UAB Archives via UAB Reporter

Roy Kracke, M.D. in 1945

Kracke was appointed Dean of the Medical College of Alabama in that year, when classes began in September in Birmingham. Previously a two-year school had operated in Tuscaloosa since 1920, after many years in mobile after its founding 1859. The state expanded the curriculum so that students did not have to leave Alabama to finish their M.D. Birmingham was chosen as the new site for its large pool of patients. 

Source: BhamWiki

Nursing students in the dormitory

Source for photo above & below: UAB Archives via UAB Reporter

These photos show the interior of the Kracke Building when it opened in July 1965 and give floor-by-floor descriptions.

I arrived late to the party, so the Kracke Building was mostly a pile of rubble when I was there on November 1. Demolition began October 9. 

In this photo you can see the Lyons-Harrison Building logo on the lower left. This structure began as the Health Sciences Research Building with a phased opening in October 1959 and fully occupied in May 1960. In November 1966 it was renamed after Dr. Champ Lyons, Chair of the Department of Surgery from 1950 until 1965, and another prominent physician, Tinsley Harrison. Among his many other achievements, Harrison wrote the standard Principles of Internal Medicine, first published in 1950 and now in its 20th edition. 

The back of Jefferson Tower, originally Jefferson Hospital which opened in 1939, is visible in this photo.

Here we can see Jefferson Tower and on the right what is now the New Hillman Building, the front of which is seen below with the statue of William Davis, M.D., an important figure in Alabama and Birmingham medical history.

Birmingham Photo of the Day (48): Symphony Orchestra in 1963

This photo was taken at a performance on the Jacksonville State College campus on February 1, 1963. The school's A Capella Choir appeared with the orchestra.

Orchestra-size ensembles based in Birmingham appeared beginning in the early 1920's. By 1956 a professional group known as the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra had formed. In 1979 the organization became the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. 

That day in Jacksonville in 1963 the music director and conductor of the orchestra was Arthur Winograd. In 1964 he became the director of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until his retirement in 1985.

Arthur Winograd [1920-2010]

Source: BhamWiki

Birmingham Photo of the Day (47): Ladies of the Club

The photo below can be found in the digital collections of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. The description there reads, "'Miss Bland Tomlinson, Miss Mary Munger and Mrs. Henry Howze at the Country Club.' From the rotogravure section of the Birmingham Age-Herald, Sunday, October 31, 1915." From June 1942 until September 1945 Henry R. Howze served as Probate Judge of Jefferson County. He was also an early trustee of the Birmingham Historical Society. I did not find a Mary Munger in Birmingham in the 1910 U.S. Census, but I did find a Mary "Manger" who was 16 at the time. No one named Bland Tomlinson or anything similar turned up in the 1910 census. A photo of the Country Club as it looked in 1915 can also be seen below. The history of the organization can be found at the BhamWiki site. Rotogravure is a type of printing process developed in the late nineteenth century. Reproduction of art and photographs benefited from this method. The Age-Herald apparently ran a Sunday feature of such reproductions. You can read some history of women's golf attire here.       

Birmimgham Photos of the Day (39): Ensley Furnaces in 1906

The two photos below show Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company's furnaces in Ensley around 1906. The company's complex at Ensley included furnaces, steel works and steel casting divisions, as well as a coke oven plant, cement works, and a pumping station at Village Creek. These massive operations, as well as employee housing, were known as the Ensley Works. The furnaces operated from 1888 until 1976. 

TCI, as the company came to be known, had been founded in 1852 as the Sewanee Mining Company. In 1907 they became U.S. Steel's primary southern subsidiary. The company's operations in the Birmingham area and elsewhere in the state made it one of Alabama's largest employers for decades.

Below the photos is a selection of pages from a book the company published in 1900. Included are a description of the Ensley Furnace Division and the book's title page and first page of the table of contents. The photo of the blowing engines at the furnaces is also from the book.

Source: Detroit Publishing Company via the U.S. Library of Congress Digital Collections [both photos]

Alabama Book Spotlight: Birmingham Yellow Pages for 1920

Telephone yellow pages are a utilitarian publication that later serve as a snapshot of the cities included. Other directories are useful in similar ways; an earlier post on this blog has an overview of some old Birmingham directories. Let's take a closer look at the 1920 yellow pages for Birmingham and see what we find.

The first page has information about the directory itself and advertisements for three companies for common services still needed today--storage, laundry and taxicabs. Love that AT&T logo.

A number of clubs are listed; some of them are still active today. I find it interesting that the city already had an automobile club in 1920. We Americans love our clubs, don't we?

Now on to another service still widely used today--hotels. Information about some of these facilities can be found on the BhamWiki site. At least one is still around, the Tutwiler, even if not in the location listed here.

In 1920 the area had several newspapers and publishing companies; at least two of the newspapers, the Alabama Baptist and Birmingham News are still being published. The Progressive Farmer and Southern Medical Journal are also still around.

The city also had a number of photography studios in this time before cheap cameras and then cell and smart phones with cameras. Below this listing is an ad for one of the studios, Lollar's Kodak Parlor. We also see a listing for Oscar V. Hunt, one of Birmingham's best known photographers. 

Of course, the city had plenty of restaurants in 1920. The Britling Cafeteria listed on 1st Avenue may be the original business in what became a chain of cafeterias in Birmingham and and other cities in Alabama and Tennessee. The chain lasted into the 1980s. Elvis Presley's mother Gladys worked at one of the Memphis locations. The only establishment on this list still in operation is the wonderful Bright Star in Bessemer which had already been open for thirteen years. Long may it thrive. 

Only one of the theaters listed in 1920 has survived, the Lyric. Thank goodness restoration of that gem is underway. "Lyric" was a common name for vaudeville and movie theaters back in the day. I saw many movies at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Huntsville. 

Here's another striking advertisement from the yellow pages:

And finally, here are two listings for a type of firm you don't see much of these days:

I plan to do another post soon on the long list of doctors in the 1920 Birmingham yellow pages.