Woodrow Hall in Woodlawn

A few weeks ago Dianne and I attended some readings and conversation with various fiction authors held at the Desert Island Supply Company in Birmingham's Woodlawn neighborhood. I've written about that event here. I wanted to write a bit in this post about the historic building in which the readings took place.

Woodrow Hall was constructed in 1914 as the Woodlawn Masonic Temple. Woodlawn Fraternal Lodge no. 525 occupied the three-story structure until 2004. Since then the building has been redeveloped into offices and an events center. The aforementioned Desert Island Supply Company offers tutoring and creative writing opportunities for secondary school students. The space is also used for musical performances, readings, and so forth. 

The photos below show part of the building at the Desert Island corner and a few features on the other front corner. All photos are mine unless otherwise noted. Woodrow Hall is located at 5500 1st Avenue North. You can read about the history of Woodlawn here. 

Photo by Amos Wright

Readings on a Desert Island

This past Saturday Dianne and I journeyed to the Woodlawn neighborhood of Birmingham to hear some authors read and converse at the Desert Island Supply Company (DISCO). DISCO has been located since 2012 on First Avenue North in part of the historic Woodrow Hall building (yes, there will be a blog post soon on that!). The non-profit Desert Island  program works with Birmingham-area students to develop their creative writing skills "to explore and document their worlds." Anthologies of student work are available. The venue is also available for concerts, readings and other events.

The program we attended featured a full afternoon of author readings and conversations with each other and audience members. Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama sponsored the event. Livingston has been publishing novels, short story collections and non-fiction since 1984; their list of some 140 titles includes many Alabama authors.

We arrived about 4:30 p.m., so we unfortunately missed the earlier authors. We did hear T.K. Thorne, Faith Kaiser, Loretta Cobb, William Cobb, Mike Burrell, Alina Stefanescu and our son Amos Wright. You can see a book cover image for each of them below. The venue was nice, and the format worked very well. The authors read a bit from their works, asked each other questions and took questions from the audience. Books were available for sale, and there was free food and libations. 

All photos are mine unless otherwise indicated. 

Woodrow Hall; the DISCO entrance is on this corner

Photo by Amos Wright 

Photo by Amos Wright

Photo by Amos Wright

Naturally I took a bunch of photos of Amos and Alina!

Source: Kirkus Reviews

Source: Livingston Press

Source: Livingston Press

Source: Livingston Press

You can read more about her writing here. 

You can read more about her writing here.

Source: Livingston Press

Winner of the twelfth Tartt First Fiction Award

Alabama Library History: Woodlawn in 1949

Women and their clubs have been very important to the development of public libraries in America. In a paper written in graduate school I explored this truth as exemplified by the efforts to organize a public library in Union Springs, Alabama, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  

I recently came across the 1949 newspaper item below and thought I would share it on this blog, since one of my ongoing topics is Alabama library history. The piece notes efforts to showcase the Birmingham Public Library and its campaign for a new building for the Woodlawn branch before the members of the Woman's Club of Birmingham. 

In the segregated city of 1949, this club was no doubt made up of white women. African-American women in Alabama had their clubs as well.

The Birmingham Public Library web site gives this brief history of the Woodlawn branch, the system's first: 

"The Woodlawn Branch Library had its beginning in 1904 when a group of club women bought a few books and started a library at the home of Mrs. J. B. Gibson. On February 27, 1905, the library was moved to the business area and opened to the public. It was presented to the city of Woodlawn on March 7, 1905 by the club women. Woodlawn became a part of Birmingham in 1910. In 1911 the library was presented to the City of Birmingham to become the first branch library in the city system."

Birmingham Age-Herald 27 October 1949

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections