Twenty-six hours of Birmingham

Twilight over Birmingham

Aside from highway construction and rows of Appalachian hills, I had little impression of Birmingham. 

Nancy and I rumbled through a year ago when returning from the Natchez Trace and Louisiana, but burdensome Sunday traffic gave no window to appreciate “the Pittsburgh of the South.” Essentially, it was anomymous.

I’m sure South Pittsburg, Tenn. might take issue with that nickname, but Birmingham’s mining and metal history makes it an apt one. Like the city at the other end of the Appalachians, Birmingham has a surprising amount of charm.

Our hospital was close to downtown and the emerging neighborhoods but not pedestrian-friendly.

The streets east-west streets earn an S or N depending on which side of the railroad tracks they lie.

 I took a brief visit to the Avondale Brewery, where a power outage had dampened the normal Thursday revelry and a glimpse of Hop City, an exhaustive beer and wine store. Avondale had a laundry list of various saisons that poured nicely. I left hoping that they might find some open taps in Nashville.

After grabbing a sandwich for dinner, I weighed whether to return to our room. But a god-topped tower came into view and I knew where I would eat. A steep but innocuous drive led to Vulcan Park; without the signs, one could mistake it for a private drive of ridgetop mansions.

 

Vulcan at dusk

But on Red Mountain, the Roman god of the forge held sway. Birmingham built the cast-iron Vulcan statue, the world’s largest, for the 1904 World’s Fair and took him first prize. They would later use the statue to crown a 124-foot stone tower on a mountain replete with great Birmingham views.

From atop Red Mountain, Vulcan overlooks the entirety of Jones Valley. I arrived around sunset, the sky alive with swirls of blue and light clouds. A group with heavy camera equipment bunkered down on the best views, so I descended after a few minutes of twilight splendor. The blue light gave me some clear shots of Birmingham.

With the tower open till 10, Nancy had to see it once her work . Since it’s a privately owned park, they do charge admission, but the views are worth all $4 and then some. We walked the steps to the deck. The outdoors greeted us with a stiff breeze and another unparalleled skyline view. UAB glittered in the foreground, with some structures radiating bizarre lights and Art Deco design.

The observation deck ringing the tower did awaken some fear of heights. You can see through the metal grating of its floor and the panels had a nasty habit of clanging regularly. For all the good it did, we gripped stone outcropped along the tower’s outer wall.

After circling in hopes of finding a coffeehouse to check on work, I went to stretch my legs at Avondale Park, where Miss Fancy once headlined the city’s earliest zoo. A miniature elephant statue stands below the park’s old gates, a homage to its famous past resident.

 

Avondale Park with Miss Fancy tribute

Revamped in 2011, the park has a spacious pond with an island inhabited by myriad ducks and turtles. Every person I passed (all two of them) greeted me. Flower gardens erupted to life In the spacious, modern library branch at the park’s southeast corner, a wall of windows brought the park indoors.

The park capped the resurging Avondale neighborhood, home of its namesake craft brewery and other entrepreneurs. Some abandoned buildings still sat along 41^st Street S, but it would not take much to fill those spaces.

I took a brief, self-guided architecture tour through downtown, and it has an impressive spectrum of building designs. Birmingham’s most striking towers date from nearly a century ago, led by the First Federal building’s impressive base of columns. Some stand abandoned, derelict guardians with windows punched away by vandals’ bricks.

Some loft apartments have crept into the urban core, as well as an array of businesses. Urban Standard, a busy coffeehouse, sat among a block of bars and boutiques. There I wrote most of this with a mix of alt-rock and a dozen conversations converging on my ears.

Mostly, I just wasted time while Nancy went through orientation. When 3:30 hit, we joined the flow of a different highway, taking I-20 east to Atlanta, where would surprise my mom for Mother’s Day.  Traffic around the Atlanta outerbelt never flowed more smoothly and we spanned Birmingham and Cumming in less than three hours. We would head up to Helen, Georgia's faux-Bavarian mountain town, on Saturday, and generally just relax in the far north Atlanta suburbs till Sunday called us back to Nashville.

Chances to surprises like that only come once.  In return for making that possible,  Birmingham will soon merit a return visit.