Our offices will reopen at 7:45 AM on Wednesday, July 5, 2023. . The city is home to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Birmingham, covering 39 counties and comprising 75 parishes and missions as well as seven Catholic high schools and nineteen elementary schools; there are also two Eastern Catholic parishes in the Birmingham area. While imprisoned for having taken part in a nonviolent protest, Dr. King wrote the now famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defining treatise in his cause against segregation. Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871, by real estate promoters who sold lots near the planned crossing of the Alabama and Chattanooga and South and North railroads. I-22 connects with I-65 just north of the Birmingham city limits. The Great Depression of the 1930s 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. QuickFacts Birmingham city, Alabama Table (a) Includes persons reporting only one race (c) Economic Census - Puerto Rico data are not comparable to U.S. Economic Census data (b) Hispanics may be of any race, so also are included in applicable race categories Birmingham was named after Birmingham, England, one of the UK's major industrial cities. Birmingham is served by the BirminghamShuttlesworth International Airport. Birmingham's population estimate is 209,880, and the Birmingham-Hoover MSA population is 1,151,801. The city has an opera company, a symphony orchestra, and theatre and ballet groups. According to investigations, the victim was involved in an altercation with an unknown individual. The Alabama Baptist, published weekly in Birmingham, is an entity of the Alabama Baptist Convention. If you wish to remain anonymous, you can call Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777. Contact Information for All Localities - Alabama Department of Revenue January has a daily mean temperature of 43.8F (6.6C), and there is an average of 47 days annually with a low at or below freezing, and 1.4 where the high does not surpass freezing. History. Box 830725 . The, Recreational fishing is also immensely popular in the Birmingham area. The Southern Heritage Festival began in the 1960s as a music, arts, and entertainment festival for the African-American community to attract mostly younger demographics. Alabama Bound is an annual book and author fair that celebrates Alabama authors and publishers. Computer and Internet Use. Birmingham has a strong-mayor variant mayor-council form of government, led by a mayor and a nine-member city council. Most of the original settlers who founded Birmingham were of English ancestry. The largest reservoir for BWWB is Lake Purdy, which is located on the Jefferson and Shelby County line, but has several other reservoirs including Bayview Lake in western Jefferson County. The National Baptist Convention has 126 congregations and 69,800 members.[39]. [54][55], Although Jefferson County's bankruptcy filing was the largest government bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2011, Birmingham remains solvent.[56]. Birmingham is located on the heart of a Tornado Alley known as the Dixie Alley due to the high frequency of tornadoes in Central Alabama. Mayor Bell, who previously served as interim Mayor in 1999, won a special election on January 19, 2010, to fill the unexpired term of former Mayor Larry Langford. [53], Birmingham's sales tax, which also applies fully to groceries, is 10% and is the highest tax rate of the nation's 100 largest cities. Foscue, Virginia O. Who We Are | The Arc of Central Alabama In the area of metropolitan public transportation, Birmingham is served by the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority (BJCTA) bus, trolley, and paratransit system, which from 1985 until 2008 was branded the Metro Area Express (MAX). Normal snowfall for 19812010 is 1.6in (4.1cm), but, for the same period, median monthly snowfall for each month was zero.[23]. U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Alabama Black & White, Weld, Birmingham Weekly, and the Birmingham Free Press[88] are some of the free alternative publications that were published in the past (all are now defunct). Much like Pittsburgh, Birmingham's major industries were iron and steel production, plus a major component of the railroading industry, where rails and railroad cars were both manufactured in Birmingham. The Robert Jemison company developed many residential neighborhoods to the south and west of Birmingham which are still renowned for their aesthetic quality. Birmingham (/brmhm/ BUR-ming-ham) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. [7] The city may have been planned as a place where cheap, non-unionized, and often African-American labor from rural Alabama could be employed in the city's steel mills and blast furnaces, giving it a competitive advantage over industrial cities in the Midwest and Northeast.[8]. The pace of Birmingham's growth during the period from 1881 through 1920 earned its nicknames The Magic City and The Pittsburgh of the South. The Buffalo Rock Company, founded in 1901, was formerly a maker of just ginger ale, but now it is a major bottler for the Pepsi Cola Company. Though the steel industry no longer has the same prominence it once held in Birmingham, steel production and processing continue to play a key role in the economy. Oak Mountain State Park is about 10 miles (16km) south of Birmingham. Two of the largest soft-drink bottlers in the United States, each with more than $500 million in sales per year, are located in Birmingham. [52], A 2006 study by American City Business Journals calculated Birmingham's "combined personal income" (the sum of all money earned by all residents of an area in a year) to be $48.1billion. The earthquake was felt as far as Atlanta and neighboring states. 5.3%. The Birmingham News' Wednesday edition features six sub regional sections named East, Hoover, North, Shelby, South, and West that cover news stories from those areas. If you have any information regarding the case, please call BPD at 205-254-1764. "Jimmie" Stephens . Eastern Health Center 601 West Blvd Roebuck Birmingham, AL 35206 Programs and Clinics 716 North Richard Arrington Jr. Blvd. In the field of railroading, the two primary hubs of railroading in the Deep South were nearby Atlanta and Birmingham, beginning in the 1860s and continuing through to the present day. Tax and License. City chosen as site for 2021 World Games", "Roderick Royal elected Birmingham Council president, and will serve as interim mayor", FBI statistics suggest the need for new crime-fighting strategies and technologies for Birmingham, "The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water", "Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority", "Bus Rapid Transit The Official Website for the City of Birmingham, Alabama", Greater Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau, History of Railroads and Industries at Birmingham Rails, Birmingham article, Encyclopedia of Alabama, cities with populations exceeding 100,000, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Birmingham,_Alabama&oldid=1162427196, Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments, Articles with dead external links from January 2022, Articles with permanently dead external links, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Pages using infobox settlement with possible nickname list, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2022, Pages using infobox settlement with possible demonym list, Pages using infobox settlement with possible area code list, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2021, Pages using Sister project links with default search, Pages using largest cities with nav class, Articles with MusicBrainz area identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0, The Wright Center Concert Hall, a 2,500-seat facility at, Motorsports are very popular in the Birmingham area and across the state, and the area is home to numerous annual motorsport races. Before the first structure was built in Birmingham, the plan of the city was laid out over a total of 1,160 acres (4.7km2) by the directors of the Elyton Land Co. The streets were numbered from west to east, leaving Twentieth Street to form the central spine of downtown, anchored on the north by Capital Park and stretching into the slopes of Red Mountain to the south. Several of the nation's largest steelmakers, including CMC Steel, U.S. Steel, and Nucor, also have a major presence in Birmingham. the .gov website. Birmingham occupies Jones Valley, flanked by long parallel mountain ridges (the tailing ends of the Appalachian foothills see Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians) running from north-east to south-west. [2] Its county seat is Birmingham. The citys industrialization was based primarily on abundant local deposits of coal, limestone, and iron ore, essential for making steel. The territorial assembly established some of the earliest county divisions which have survived to the present. For more details, The Rick and Bubba show, which is syndicated to over 25 stations primarily in the Southeast, originates from Birmingham's WZZK-FM. [90] The sewer construction and bond-swap agreements continue to be a controversial topic in the area.[90]. Nearby Oak Mountain State Park annually hosts the Bump N' Grind mountain bike (1995present) race, This page was last edited on 29 June 2023, at 02:58. Earthquakes are generally minor and the Birmingham area can feel an earthquake from the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone. Between these colleges and universities, the Birmingham area has major colleges of medicine, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, law, engineering, and nursing. The main post office is located at 351 24th Street North in Downtown Birmingham. [44], In 2012, Birmingham was the 9th largest banking hub in the United States by the amount of locally headquartered deposits. In addition, the Birmingham area serves as headquarters to one Fortune 500 company: Regions Financial, along with five other Fortune 1000 companies. The United Methodists have 196 congregations and 66,759 members. [37][38], The Southern Baptist Convention has 673 congregations and 336,000 members in the Birmingham Metro area. ) or https:// means youve safely connected to Miles College, maintained by the Methodist Episcopal church, was founded in 1905. Electric power is provided primarily by Southern Company-subsidiary, Alabama Power. [86] The A&E Network series The First 48 has filmed episodes with some of the city's homicide detectives. Users should exercise caution when comparing 2017-2021 ACS 5-year estimates to other ACS estimates. During the 1960s Birmingham was the scene of violence over racial segregation as well as civil rights demonstrations and voter-registration drives led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. Hours: 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. At this time, the General Assembly ran county governments as extensions of the state through their legislative delegations. Mining in the Birmingham area is no longer a major industry with the exception of coal mining. [49] This number has increased since, but not significantly. About Map: Map showing the Location of Birmingham in the US. Share sensitive information only on official, Jefferson County Extension Office is on the corner. Birmingham was founded on June 1, 1871, by the Elyton Land Company whose investors included cotton planters, bankers and railroad entrepreneurs. From May 1974 to September 1977, the Auto-Train Corporation operated its eponymous train via Birmingham on its Louisville, Kentucky to Sanford, Florida route. organization in the United States. Travel south to the corner of 22nd Street and Rev. Perry County Courthouse Marion, AL 36756 Visit Perry County's Public GIS Website. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS This airport serves more than 3million passengers every year. The first permanent colony was made by the French on the banks of the Mobile River in 1702. In 1969 the University of Alabama at Birmingham was established, one of three main campuses of the University of Alabama System. This article is about the city in Alabama. In higher education, Birmingham has been the location of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine (formerly the Medical College of Alabama) and the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry since 1947. The city is the seat of several institutions of higher education, the largest of which, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is a unit (founded 1969) of the state university system. Jefferson County Department of Health - JCDH Housing The town of Elyton, Alabama, and several other surrounding towns were absorbed into Birmingham in 1911. Enter Search Terms. The area was hit by an EF4 tornado which was part of a larger outbreak in April 2011. The median age was 34years. The city of Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama and is situated in both Shelby and Jefferson Counties. This festival usually is scheduled in late August at eight venues around downtown. Alabama was claimed by Spain, as Spanish Florida, and by England, as the Province of Carolina. It is complemented by Hoover's 30-acre (120,000m2) Aldridge Botanical Gardens, an ambitious project open since 2002. The city's formerly most populous ethnic group, non-Hispanic white,[15] has declined from 57.4 percent in 1970 to 21.1 percent in 2010.