What to See in Birmingham - Top Sights and Attractions

Local history museum in Birmingham, Alabama. Sloss Furnaces is a National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. It operated as a pig iron-producing blast furnace from 1882 to 1971. After closing, it became one of the first industrial sites in the U.S. to be preserved and restored for public use. In 1981, the furnaces were designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior.

The site currently serves as an interpretive museum of industry and hosts a nationally recognized metal arts program. It also serves as a concert and festival venue. A new visitor center was built 2015 and opened in 2016. The furnace site, along a wide strip of land reserved in Birmingham's original city plan for railroads and industry, hosts thousands of students through their education programs per year. The museum is free to visit during their operating hours of Tuesday-Saturday 10:00 A.M to 4:00 P.M.^[1]

Museum in Birmingham, Alabama. The Birmingham Museum of Art is a museum in Birmingham, Alabama. It has one of the most extensive collections of artwork in the Southeastern United States, with more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing numerous cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. Among other highlights, the museum's collection of Asian art is considered the finest and most comprehensive in the Southeast, and its Vietnamese ceramics one of the finest in the US. The museum also is home to a collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c.1750.

The Birmingham Museum of Art is owned by the City of Birmingham and encompasses 3.9 acres (16,000 m2) in the heart of the city’s cultural district. Erected in 1959, the present building was designed by architects Warren, Knight and Davis, and a major renovation and expansion by Edward Larrabee Barnes of New York was completed in 1993. The facility encompasses 180,000 square feet (17,000 m2), including an outdoor sculpture garden.

The museum is part of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network, launched in 2021 by the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.^[4]

Stadium in Birmingham, Alabama. Regions Field is the name of a minor league baseball park in the Southside community of Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. It is the home field for the Birmingham Barons of the Double-A South, and replaced Hoover Metropolitan Stadium in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover as their home field. It also serves as the second home field along with Jerry D. Young Memorial Field for the UAB Blazers. Regions Field is located adjacent to the Railroad Park, just south of downtown Birmingham.

Baseball in Birmingham traces its history to 1885 with the establishment of the original Barons, and from 1910 to 1987, professional baseball teams called Rickwood Field home. In 1988, the Barons moved to Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, leaving the city of Birmingham without professional baseball. In 2009, a proposal surfaced to build a downtown stadium to bring baseball back to Birmingham. After a feasibility study was completed, in October 2010, the city lodging tax was increased to finance its construction and in November 2010, a tentative agreement was reached to bring the Barons back to Birmingham. Groundbreaking ceremonies were held for the new facility on February 2, 2012, and the park celebrated its grand opening on April 10, 2013.^[8]

The Woodlawn City Hall, at 5525 First Ave. N, in Birmingham, Alabama, was built in 1908. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. It is also one of 12 contributing buildings in the Woodlawn Commercial Historic District, and one of 608 contributing buildings in larger Woodlawn Historic District.

It is a two-story building.

It served as city hall of independent Woodlawn, Alabama for only two years, before the city was incorporated into Birmingham. It included "most of the town's public functions within its walls— city offices, the court and jail, the fire department, an auditorium for meetings and performances, and the first branch of the Greater Birmingham Library, which began with 890 books. Relieved of its city hall status after the annexation, the upstairs became used entirely by the Library (they did not build separate quarters until 1950), while the street level was converted on one side to retail spaces, the longest-term occupant of which was the Morgan Brothers Department Store. The fire station remained until 1928, and subsequently that half of the first floor was converted to commercial use. The City of Birmingham did not sell the Woodlawn City Hall to private interests until 1940."^[11]

Botanical garden in Birmingham, Alabama. The Birmingham Botanical Gardens is 67.5-acre of botanical gardens located adjacent to Lane Park at the southern foot of Red Mountain in Birmingham, Alabama. The gardens are home to over 12,000 different types of plants, 25 unique gardens, more than 30 works of original outdoor sculpture, and several miles of walking paths. With more than 350,000 annual visitors, the Birmingham Botanical Gardens qualify as one of Alabama's top free-admittance tourist attractions.

The gardens include a garden center that has a library (the largest public horticulture library in the U.S.), auditorium, Linn-Henley Lecture Hall, Blount Education Center, Gerlach Plant Information Center, Alabama Cooperative Extension System office, Arrington Children's Plant Adventure Zone, and a restaurant.^[12]

Museum in Birmingham, Alabama. The McWane Science Center is a science museum and research archive located in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, United States. The state-of-the-art science center, aquarium, and 280-seat IMAX Dome Theater is housed in the historic and refurbished Loveman's department store building. It opened to the public on July 11, 1998.

On the lower level, the World of Water exhibit showcases more than 50 species of marine and freshwater aquatic life. There is a touch tank with different species of small sharks and rays. There are also shark teeth that can be observed under a microscope and different displays about water pollution.

The Alabama Collections Center (on the second floor) is the home of more than 500,000 items from the former Red Mountain Museum. The center houses precious minerals, fossils, and Native American artifacts, the most noteworthy including the world's fourth-largest collection of mosasaurs; the Appalachiosaurus (similar to Tyrannosaurus); and the state fossil of Alabama, the Basilosaurus cetoides (an 80-foot (24 m) fossil whale).

For smaller children there is the Itty Bitty Magic City exhibit (on the second floor), featuring a climbing structure, a water play area, an area specifically for toddlers, and an area with smaller versions of common buildings in a city. The model buildings are all made to help younger children learn skills, or to connect with their parents. One example is a model grocery store where children can learn about the main food groups while "shopping" with their parents. The exhibit opened on May 16, 2015, and was a remodeling of an older early childhood play place with the same name previously located on the third floor.

The McWane Science Center is named after the McWane family and McWane, Inc. both of which helped fund the center.^[13]

Playing field in Birmingham, Alabama. Rickwood Field, located in Birmingham, Alabama, is the oldest professional baseball park in the United States. It was built for the Birmingham Barons in 1910 by industrialist and team-owner Rick Woodward and has served as the home park for the Birmingham Barons and the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro leagues. Though the Barons moved their home games to the Hoover Met in the suburbs, and most recently to Regions Field in Birmingham, Rickwood Field has been preserved and is undergoing gradual restoration as a "working museum" where baseball's history can be experienced. The Barons also play one regular season game a year at Rickwood Field. Rickwood Field is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^[15]

Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama. The Alabama Theatre is a movie palace in Birmingham, Alabama. It was built in 1927 by Paramount's Publix Theatre chain as its flagship theater for the southeastern region of the United States. Seating 2,500 people at the time, it was the largest in the Birmingham Theatre district. The district was once home to a myriad of large theaters that featured vaudeville, performing arts, nickelodeons, and large first-run movie palaces. The Alabama is the only district theater still operating today. Built to show silent films, the Alabama still features its original Wurlitzer theater organ. Other than the Alabama, the Lyric Theatre is the only theater still standing in the district.

The Alabama and its historic organ were added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on February 15, 1977, and to the National Register of Historic Places on November 13, 1979. The theater has been surveyed by the Historic American Buildings Survey on several occasions, the last time being in 1996. It was designated as the state's historic theater in 1993.^[16]

Cathedral in Birmingham, Alabama. The Cathedral of Saint Paul — informally known as Saint Paul's Cathedral — is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama. Designed by Chicago architect Adolphus Druiding, the Victorian Gothic-style brick building was completed as a parish church in 1893. The parish it serves was established in 1872 and the cornerstone bears both dates. It was elevated to cathedral status with the creation of the Diocese of Birmingham in 1969.

During its days as a parish, its most famous pastor was Father James Coyle. There is the aspiration of relocating his remains from Elmwood Cemetery to the cathedral as the cause for his beatification as a martyr advances.

The contractor that had to be talked into moving to Birmingham to build the project was Lawrence Scully. Just prior to its completion, Lawrence Scully was killed when his horse-drawn carriage was spooked by a passing motor vehicle that honked its horn. The horse reared and flipped the carriage over, killing Lawrence Scully. Lawrence Scully also built one of Birmingham's first public schools, the Powell School.

Two buildings, the church and associated school, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as St. Paul's Catholic Church in 1982.

The stained-glass windows in the cathedral's aisles are the work of G. C. Riordan & Company of Cincinnati. They were in place when the church was first used. The large window of St. Paul over the entrance was installed in 1972, replacing an older window that had been damaged in a storm.^[18]

Park in Birmingham, Alabama. Kelly Ingram Park, formerly West Park, is a 4 acres park located in Birmingham, Alabama. It is bounded by 16th and 17th Streets and 5th and 6th Avenues North in the Birmingham Civil Rights District. The park, just outside the doors of the 16th Street Baptist Church, served as a central staging ground for large-scale demonstrations during the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Reverend James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference directed the organized protest by students in 1963 which centered on Kelly Ingram Park. It was here, during the first week of May 1963, that Birmingham police and firemen, under orders from Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor, confronted the student demonstrators, almost all of them children and high school students, first with mass arrests and then with police dogs and firehoses. Images from those confrontations, broadcast internationally, spurred a public outcry which turned the nation's attention to the struggle for racial equality. The demonstrations in Birmingham brought city leaders to agree to an end of public segregation and helped to ensure the writing and then the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The park was named in 1932 for local firefighter Osmond Kelly Ingram, who was the first sailor in the United States Navy to be killed in World War I. In 1992 it was completely renovated and rededicated as "A Place of Revolution and Reconciliation" to coincide with the opening of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, an interpretive museum and research center, which adjoins the park to the west.

The park is the setting for several pieces of sculpture related to the civil rights movement.

There is a central fountain and commemorative statues of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and some of the other heroes of the civil rights movement, as well as three installations by artist James Drake which flank a circular "Freedom Walk". They bring the visitor inside the portrayals of terror and sorrow of the 1963 confrontations. A limestone sculpture by Raymond Kaskey depicts three ministers, John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith, and A. D. King, kneeling in prayer.

The Four Spirits sculpture was unveiled at Kelly Ingram Park on September, 2013 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. Crafted in Berkeley, California by Birmingham-born sculptor Elizabeth MacQueen and designed as a memorial to the four girls killed in the bombing (which occurred on September 15, 1963), it depicts the four girls in preparation for the church sermon at the 16th Street Baptist Church in the moments immediately before the explosion. The youngest girl killed in the explosion (Carol Denise McNair) is depicted releasing six doves into the air as she stands tiptoed and barefooted upon a bench as another barefooted girl (Addie Mae Collins) is depicted kneeling upon the bench, affixing a dress sash to McNair; a third girl (Cynthia Wesley) is depicted sitting upon the bench alongside McNair and Collins with a book in her lap. The book depicts the refrain of William Butler Yeats poem "The Stolen Child". The fourth girl (Carole Robertson) is depicted standing and smiling as she motions the other three girls to attend their church sermon. At the base of the sculpture is an inscription of the name of the sermon the four girls were to attend prior to the bombing—"A Love that Forgives." Oval photographs and brief biographies of the four girls killed in the explosion, the most seriously injured survivor (Sarah Collins), and the two teenage boys shot to death later that day also adorn the base of the sculpture.

Additional monuments honor Pauline Fletcher, Carrie A. Tuggle, Ruth Jackson, Arthur Shores, Julius Ellsberry, and the "foot soldiers" and other "unsung heroes" of the Civil Rights Movement.

The park hosts several local family festivals and cultural and entertainment events throughout the year. The Civil Rights Institute provides audio-tour guides for the park which feature remembrances by many of the figures directly involved in the confrontations. Urban Impact, Inc. also provides guided tours by appointment.^[19]

Cemetery. Oak Hill Cemetery, located just north of downtown, is Birmingham, Alabama's oldest cemetery. Originally 21.5 acres on the estate of James M. Ware, it was already a burial ground by April 1869 when it served as the resting place for the infant daughter of future mayor Robert H. Henley. It was marked as "City Cemetery" on the original plats for Birmingham laid out by the Elyton Land Company and was formally sold to the city on December 29, 1873 for the sum of $1,073.50.

Most of the 10,000 or so burials at Oak Hill were interred before 1930, including nine of the ten landholders who founded the city, many early mayors, a Revolutionary soldier, numerous American Civil War veterans, and the first male child born in the city. Although few records exist from the time, most believe the "Potter's Field" section was also used as the final resting place for many victims of the 1873 cholera epidemic.

In 1889 Judge A. O. Lane purchased 200 acres (0.8 km2) on the southern slopes of Red Mountain (Birmingham, Alabama), now Lane Park, for the burial of paupers, thereby ending the use of Oak Hill's "Potter's Field". In 1928 the caretaker's cottage near the center of the property, was removed to the southwest corner of the cemetery and a new "Pioneer's Memorial Building" was constructed of Indiana limestone, designed by Miller & Martin Architects with William Kessler, landscape architect.

In 1977, Oak Hill Cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Oak Hill Memorial Association keeps an office in the former caretaker's cottage and published a quarterly newsletter, the Oak Hill Pioneer, from Winter 1999 to Fall 2006, with articles about the history of the city in the context of the lives of those buried at Oak Hill.^[23]

The Birmingham Civil Rights District is an area of downtown Birmingham, Alabama where several significant events in the 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.

On March 21, 2016, Rep. Terri Sewell introduced to the United States House of Representatives H.R. 4817, a bill that would designate the Birmingham Civil Rights District as a National Park. On March 28, 2016, the bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Federal Lands. However, a portion of the district was designated by executive order by President Obama as the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument on January 12, 2017.^[26]

The Red Mountain Expressway Cut, also known as the Red Mountain Geological Cut, is a section of Red Mountain that was blasted and removed in the 1960s to allow the Red Mountain Expressway to enter downtown Birmingham, Alabama. This highway links Birmingham with its southern suburbs of Homewood, Mountain Brook, and Vestavia Hills. It has spurred suburban growth towards the south of Birmingham. This section also provides the route for U.S. Route 31 to the south and US 280 to the southeast.

The resultant cut exposes geological strata spanning millions of years (150 million years of geological time within 650 feet or 200 metres of exposure), including the red ore seam that spurred Birmingham's development. A new species of Lower Silurian (middle Llandovery epoch) phacopsid trilobite, Acaste birminghamensis, was first collected from exposures on Red Mountain. Named for the city, the new species was published in May 1972.

The cut was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1987.^[30]

Park in Birmingham, Alabama. Railroad Park is a 19-acre park in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, that opened in the fall of 2010. It was designed by landscape architect Tom Leader and built by Birmingham-based Brasfield & Gorrie. The park lies immediately south of the Norfolk Southern and CSX rail lines through downtown Birmingham. It stretches from 14th Street to 18th Street along First Avenue South. UAB Hospital and Children's Hospital of Alabama are several blocks south of the park. The park is a public facility owned by the City of Birmingham and managed by the non-profit Railroad Park Foundation.

In 2016 Rotary Trail was opened, which connects Railroad Park to Sloss Furnaces through a pedestrian greenway.^[32]