One of the best known metropolitan areas in the South, Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama and is the center of an area known for its historic sites and points of interest.
Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark
Sloss Furnaces produced iron for nearly 90 years, which gave rise to the city of Birmingham, AL. Now recognized as a National Historic Landmark, Sloss Furnaces, with its web of pipes and tall smokestacks, offers a glimpse into the great industrial past of the South and our nation. Sloss received National Historic Landmark designation in 1981 and opened its gates in September 1983, as a museum of the City of Birmingham. Its collection consists of two 400-ton blast furnaces and some forty other buildings.
Civil Rights District
The Birmingham Civil Rights District is an area of downtown Birmingham, Alabama where several significant events in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s took place. The district was designated by the City of Birmingham in 1992 and covers a six-block area.
Landmarks in the district include:
- 16th Street Baptist Church, where the students involved in the 1963 Children’s Campaign were trained and left in groups of 50 to march on City Hall, and where four young African American girls were killed and 22 churchgoers were injured in a bombing on September 15, 1963.
- Kelly Ingram Park, where many protests by blacks were held, often resulting in recrimination by Birmingham police, including the famous 1963 scenes of policemen turning back young protesters with fire hoses and police dogs. News coverage of the riots in this park helped turn the tide of public opinion in the United States against segregationist policies. Several sculptures in the park depict scenes from those police riots.
- The Fourth Avenue Business District, where much of the city’s black businesses and entertainment venues were located; the area was the hub of the black community for many years. The business district includes A. G. Gaston’s Booker T. Washington Insurance Co. and the Gaston Motel, a meeting place for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights during the early 1960s.
- Carver Theatre, once a popular motion picture theater for blacks in Birmingham, now renovated as a live-performance theater and home of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a museum which chronicles the events, struggles, and victories of the Civil Rights Movement, opened in 1993.
9-11 Memorial Walk
Located between 3rd and 4th Avenue on 19th Street North, the 9-11 Memorial Walk is a block-long greenway in downtown Birmingham (300 block of 19th Street North) linking three public art projects as a memorial to the events of September 11th. The three pieces are the “Liberty Garden,” the “Children’ s Hero Bench” and the “Ribbon Bench ” sculpture.
Statue of Liberty Replica
Birmingham is home to three mighty titans – Vulcan, Electra, and a replica Statue of Liberty. The 36-foot-tall bronze replica Liberty, 1/5th scale of the one in New York harbor, was erected atop the Liberty National Life Insurance building in 1958. It was moved in 1988, and now stands on a tall pedestal in Liberty Park, a commercial development just off I-459. It is one of the largest Liberty replicas in the world, and real gas-fired flames shoot from the torch around the clock.
Antebellum Home & Gardens
Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens is a former plantation house and 6 acres of landscaped gardens near downtown Birmingham, Alabama. The two-story frame structure was built between 1845–50 and features antebellum-era Greek Revival architecture. The house serves as a decorative arts museum, featuring a collection of 19th-century furniture, textiles, silver, and paintings. The garden features a restored garden room that is used for special events. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 2, 1970.
No matter which historic site you decide to visit in Birmingham, Limbaugh Toyota can provide the means to get you there.
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