Downtown Birmingham Alabama - A Century Ago

by Mark Tisdale

Title

Downtown Birmingham Alabama - A Century Ago

Artist

Mark Tisdale

Medium

Photograph - Restored Vintage Black And White Photo

Description

Restored black and white photo showing 2nd Avenue North near the intersections of 19th and 20th streets in the heart of the Central City neighborhood. This is Birmingham as it looked circa 1906 with crowded streets and people in motion going about their day. The original photo was published by the Detroit Publishing Company and has been personally restored to retain the beautiful old style while bringing all the crisp details back into focus once more.

From what I can tell few of the buildings seen here exist as they did then if they stand at all. But the tall building midway in the photo is the then new First National Bank Building, built only a few years earlier in 1903. Today it's known as the Frank Nelson Building and as one of Birmingham's earliest skyscrapers still stands proudly on the corner of 2nd Avenue North and 20th Street.

The original photo this was restored from can be seen on the Library of Congress website:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/det1994012017/PP/

See more of both my restoration work as well as my original artwork at Tisdaleart.com

Uploaded

February 24th, 2015

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