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Birmingham is coming! For now read about Birmingham
Alabama.
Birmingham (pronounced
BUR-ming-ham) is
the largest
city in the U.S. state of Alabama and is the county
seat of Jefferson County. It also includes part of
Shelby County. The population of the city was
229,800 according to the 2007 estimate.[2] The
Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, as of the 2008
census estimates, has a population of 1,198,932. It
is also the largest city in the
Birmingham-Hoover-Cullman Combined Statistical Area,
colloquially known as Greater Birmingham
Birmingham was founded in 1871, just after
the U.S. Civil War, as an industrial enterprise. It
was named after Birmingham, one of the UK's major industrial
cities. Through the middle of the 20th
century,
Birmingham was the primary industrial center of the
Southern United States. The astonishing pace of
Birmingham's growth through the turn of the century
earned it the nicknames "The Magic City" and
"The Pittsburgh of the South". Much like
Pittsburgh in the north, Birmingham's major
industries centered around iron and steel
production.
Over the course of the 20th century, the city's
economy diversified. Though the manufacturing
industry maintains a strong presence in Birmingham,
other industries such as banking, insurance,
medicine, publishing, and biotechnology have risen
in stature. Birmingham has been recognized as one of
the top cities for income growth in the United
States South with a significant increase in per
capita income since 1990.
Today, Birmingham ranks as one of the most
important business centers in the
Southeastern United States and is also one of the
largest banking centers in the U.S. In addition, the
Birmingham area serves as headquarters to one
Fortune 500 company: Regions Financial. Five Fortune
1000 companies are headquartered in
Birmingham.
Founding and early
growth
Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871, by cotton
gin promoters who sold lots near the planned
crossing of the Alabama & Chattanooga and South &
North Alabama railroads. The first business at that
crossroads was the trading post and country store
Yeilding's. The site of the railroad crossing was
notable for the nearby deposits of iron ore, coal,
and limestone - the three principal raw materials
used in making steel. Birmingham is the only place
worldwide where significant amounts of all three
minerals can be found in such close proximity. From
the start the new city was planned as a great center
of industry. The founders borrowed the name of
Birmingham, one of England's principal industrial
cities, to advertise that point. Birmingham was off
to a slow start: the city was impeded by an outbreak
of cholera and a Wall Street crash in 1873. However, it began to
grow shortly afterwards at an explosive rate.
The turn of the century brought the substantial
growth that gave Birmingham the nickname "The Song
of The South" as the downtown area developed from a
low-rise commercial and residential district into a
busy grid of neoclassical mid-rise and high-rise
buildings and busy streetcar lines. Between 1902 and
1912 four large office buildings were constructed at
the intersection of 20th Street, the central
north–south spine of the city, and 1st Avenue North,
which connected the warehouses and industrial
facilities stretching along the east–west railroad
corridor. This impressive group of early skyscrapers
was nicknamed "The
Heaviest Corner on Earth".
Optimistic that the
rapidly growing city could be further improved, a
group of local businessmen led by Courtney
Shropshire formed an independent service club in
1917. The group would later incorporate and become
the first chapter of Civitan International, now a
worldwide organization.[4] The Great Depression hit
Birmingham especially hard as sources of capital
that were fueling the city's growth rapidly dried up
at the same time that farm laborers, driven off the
land, made their way to the city in search of work.
New Deal programs made important contributions to
the city's infrastructure and artistic legacy,
including such key improvements as Vulcan's tower
and Oak Mountain State Park.
The wartime demand for steel and the post-war
building boom gave Birmingham a rapid return to
prosperity. Manufacturing diversified beyond the
production of raw materials and several major
cultural institutions, such as the
Birmingham Museum of Art, were able to expand
their scope.
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