As well as its status as a Historical State Park, it also hosts the Alabama Iron and Steel Museum. There are also the Tannehill Ironworks, once a complex that produced iron for the Confederate military during the Civil War. It is the only blast furnace in the United States that has been restored for the public, adding to its cultural importance. The site often hosts conferences and events, many of which are dedicated to metalworking. It is now an urban industrial museum and showplace dedicated to iron art. Before its last blast in the 1970s, the furnaces was still know as one of the largest sellers of pig iron in the world. A 32-acre plant that produced pig iron for almost a century beginning in the late 1800s, it was deemed a National Historical Landmark in 1981.Ĭreated in 1880 by one of the founders of Birmingham, Colonel James Withers Sloss, the city’s first blast furnace produced 24,000 tons of iron during its first year of operation.Īfter retiring, Sloss sold the company to investors, which led to its reorganization and expansion. One of the noteworthy sites in the city is Sloss Furnaces. Much of the city’s character is defined by its past, and has led to a great preservation that helps it carve out a unique identity of its own. Birmingham has moved on from its challenges, refashioning itself into a place that is both respectful of tradition yet relevantly livable. Time has passed since those turbulent years, though, and a tide of developments is slowly taking the Steel City on the road back to prosperity. Many residents fled to Birmingham’s outer suburbs, shaken by the discord. World War II reawakened the city’s industry, however, resulting in an influx of jobs and a subsequent population boom.Īlthough still thriving, in the postwar years the city became a setting for civil unrest, Birmingham suffered heavily from conflicts relating to civil rights issues. Economic lulls have occurred, and Birmingham has had to revive itself numerous times because of war and epidemics – the city’s industries were hit especially hard by a cholera outbreak of 1873 and the Great Depression in the early 20 th Century. However, the city’s industrial heavyweight status was not to be permanent. Birmingham’s wealth and identity was built on iron and steel (which is an alloy of iron), and was almost solely dependent on these materials. Its strategic location near Jones Valley, a source of coal, steel ore and limestone, made it a perfect place to produce steel and set up its crucial railway system.įor centuries, its steel mills and plants were the thriving heart of the city’s economy. Soon after its foundation, the city grew quickly and became known as the “Magic City” for its extraordinary post-Civil War expansion. It was named after Birmingham in the United Kingdom – which was then the center of that country’s steel industry. Birmingham, Alabama was established in 1871 at the foothills of the Appalachians near one of the world’s richest mineral deposits.
0 kommentar(er)
