Birmingham was founded in 1871, just after the U.S. Civil War, as an industrial enterprise. It was named after Birmingham, one of the UK's major industrial cities. Through the middle of the 20th century, Birmingham was the primary industrial center of the Southern United States. The astonishing pace of Birmingham's growth through the turn of the century earned it the nicknames "The Magic City" and "The Pittsburgh of the South". Much like Pittsburgh in the north, Birmingham's major industries centered around iron and steel production.
Over the course of the 20th century, the city's economy diversified. Though the manufacturing industry maintains a strong presence in Birmingham, other industries such as banking, insurance, medicine, publishing, and biotechnology have risen in stature. Birmingham has been recognized as one of the top cities for income growth in the United States South with a significant increase in per capita income since 1990.
Today, Birmingham ranks as one of the most important business centers in the Southeastern United States and is also one of the largest banking centers in the U.S. In addition, the Birmingham area serves as headquarters to one Fortune 500 company: Regions Financial. Five Fortune 1000 companies are headquartered in Birmingham.
As of the census of 2000, there were 242,820 people, 98,782 households, and 59,269 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,619.7 people per square mile (625.4/km²). There were 111,927 housing units at an average density of 746.6/sq mi (288.3/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 73.46% Black or African American, 24.07% White, 0.17% Native American, 0.80% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.62% from other races, and 0.83% from two or more races. 1.55% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. It should be noted that the MSA of Birmingham is closer to a 75% Caucasian 25% African-American split. Also the MSA crime rate is much lower and in line with other comparable Southern cities like Nashville or Knoxville. The MSA has been growing as well over the past 25 years as many Birmingham residents have moved to other cities within the MSA.
There were 98,782 households out of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.1% were married couples living together, 24.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.0% were non-families. 34.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 3.09.
In the city, the population is spread out, with 25.0% under the age of 18, 11.1% from 18 to 24, 30.0% from 25 to 44, 20.4% from 45 to 64, and 13.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 85.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.4 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $26,735, and the median income for a family was $31,851. Males had a median income of $28,184 versus $23,641 for females. The city's per capita income was $15,663. About 20.9% of families and 24.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 35.4% of those under age 18 and 18.5% of those age 65 or over.
Cities and suburbs are listed in order of population.
Crime is a challenge in Birmingham because of many residents leaving the city proper to move to the suburbs due to lower cost housing and better schools. Although homicide rates have remained at high levels for several years, the MSA crime statistics are not nearly as high. According to statistics reported to the FBI, Birmingham has the seventh highest murder rate among US cities and is ranked eighteenth in violent crime, but again this is for Birmingham proper only and does not include the various sub-cities which make up the 1.1 million Birmingham MSA. Adding these stats in, the Bham MSA crime rate is in line with several low crime southern MSA such as Jacksonville, FL, and Charlotte, NC. Recently the A&E series, "The First 48" has filmed episodes with some of the city's Homicide detectives.
The downtown district, relatively free from crime, is patrolled by City Action Partnership (CAP), formed in 1995 to increase the perception of safety. Funded by a downtown improvement association, the organization reports a 62% decline in criminal activity within its 109-block area.
Birmingham is the cultural and entertainment capital of Alabama with its numerous art galleries in the area and home to Birmingham Museum of Art, the largest art museum in the state. Birmingham is also home to the state's major ballet, opera, and symphony orchestra companies such the Alabama Ballet, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Ballet, Birmingham Concert Chorale, Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival and Opera Birmingham.
Other entertainment venues in the area include:
Birmingham's nightlife is primarily clustered around Five Points South and Lakeview, but an additional $55-million entertainment district has been approved for an area adjacent to the BJCC. Birminghamtrends is Birmingham's Online Guide to the City's Nightlife. Birmingham also has a very popular local music scene that has made the city a breeding ground for some of the nation's best musicians.
Birmingham has its own Orange Lodge. Birmingham "Sons of William" LOL 1003 was instituted as a Lodge in January 2004. The man behind the formation of this lodge was Rev Paul Zahl. The lodge has a close relationship with Maghera "Sons of William" LOL 209 from Northern Ireland. The members of the Birmingham Lodge have travelled to Northern Ireland to participate in the Annual "Twelfth" parade.
The Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham maintains activeculture.info, "a one-stop source for finding out what's going on where around" Birmingham.
Birmingham is home to several museums. The largest is the Birmingham Museum of Art, which is also the largest municipal art museum in the Southeast. The area's history museums includes Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which houses a detailed and emotionally-charged narrative exhibit putting Birmingham's history into the context of the U. S. Civil Rights Movement. It is located on Kelly Ingram Park adjacent to the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Other history museums include the Southern Museum of Flight, Bessemer Hall of History, Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark, Alabama Museum of Health Sciences, and the Arlington Home.
The McWane Science Center is a regional science museum with hands-on science exhibits, temporary exhibitions, and an IMAX dome theater. The center also houses a major collection of fossil specimens for use by researchers. Other unique museums include the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, with the largest collection of motorcycles in the world, the Iron & Steel Museum of Alabama at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park near McCalla, the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, and the Talladega Superspeedway International Motorsports Hall of Fame museum.
South of downtown on Red Mountain, Vulcan Park features the world's largest cast iron statue, depicting Vulcan at his forge. It was cast for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, and erected at Vulcan Park in 1938.
Birmingham is home to numerous cultural festivals that feature music, films, and regional heritage. City Stages is a world-renowned music festival that takes place in Birmingham's Linn Park on Father's Day weekend. It offers three days of music from all genres on 11 stages. Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival brings filmmakers from all over the world to Birmingham to have their films viewed and judged. This festival usually is scheduled on the last weekend in September at eight venues around downtown. Screenings are concentrated at the Alabama Theatre. Another musical festival is the Taste of 4th Avenue Jazz Festival, presented at the end of September each year, concurrent with the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. This all day festival features national and local jazz acts. In 2007, the festival drew an estimated 6,000 people.
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. Do Dah Day is an annual pet parade held around the end of May. The Schaeffer Eye Center Crawfish Boil, an annual music festival event held in May to benefit local charities, always includes an all-star cast of talent. It typically draws more than 30,000 spectators for the annual two-day event. The annual Greek Festival, a celebration of Greek heritage, culture, and especially cuisine, is a charity fundraiser hosted by the Greek Orthodox Holy Trinity - Holy Cross Cathedral. The Greek Festival draws 20,000 patrons annually. [8]
Alabama Bound is an annual book and author fair that celebrates Alabama authors and publishers. Hosted by the Birmingham Public Library, it is an occasion when fans may meet their favorite authors, buy their books, and hear them read from and talk about their work. Book signings follow each presentation.
Kelly Ingram Park, site of notable civil rights protests and adjacent to historic 16th Street Baptist Church. Oak Mountain State Park is about 10 miles (16 km) South of Birmingham. It is one of the southernmost wrinkles in the Appalachian chain, and a scenic drive to the top provides views reminiscent of the Great Smoky Mountains further north. To the west of the city is located Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park, a 1,500-acre (6.1 km) Civil War site which includes the well-preserved ruins of the Tannehill Iron Furnaces and the John Wesley Hall Grist Mill. The Birmingham Botanical Gardens is a 67 acre (270,000 m²) park displaying a wide variety of plants in interpretive gardens, including formal rose gardens, tropical greenhouses, and a large Japanese Garden. The facility also includes a white-tablecloth restaurant, meeting rooms, and an extensive reference library. It is complimented by Hoover's 30-acre (120,000 m) Aldridge Gardens, an ambitious project open since 2002. Still under development, Aldridge is currently more valuable to locals looking for a place to stroll than to tourists, but promises unique displays in coming years. The Birmingham Zoo is a large regional zoo with more than 700 animals and a recently opened interactive children's zoo. Alabama Adventure Theme Park (formerly Visionland) is an amusement park with two independent sections: Splash Beach Water Park and Magic Adventure Theme Park,. The theme park has 25 different thrill rides including The Rampage wooden roller coaster and Zoomerang, a steel roller coaster purchased in 2004 from the Brisbane expo. (The park was renamed at the start of the 2006 season, and major expansion plans were announced at that time.)
Other area sport facilities include:
Birmingham is served by one daily newspaper, The Birmingham News (circulation 150,346), which in 2007 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, the newspaper's second Pulitzer. 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. The Birmingham Post-Herald, the city's second daily, published its last issue in 2006. Other local publications include The North Jefferson News, The Leeds News, The Western Star (Bessemer) and The Hoover Gazette.
Birmingham Weekly, Birmingham Free Press and Black & White (published biweekly) are Birmingham's free alternative publications. The Birmingham Times, a historic African-American newspaper, also is published weekly.
Birmingham is served by the city magazine of the Chamber of Commerce, The Birmingham magazine.
Birmingham is part of the Birmingham/Anniston/Tuscaloosa television market, which is the nation's 40th largest. The major television affiliates are WBRC 6 (FOX), WBIQ 10 (PBS), WVTM 13 (NBC), WTTO 21 (CW), WBMA 33/40 (ABC), WIAT 42 (CBS), WPXH 44 (ION), and WABM 68 (MyNetworkTV).
Over 45 radio stations serve the Birmingham market, which is the nation's 56th largest radio market. Major broadcasting companies who own stations in the Birmingham market include Clear Channel, Cox Radio, Citadel Broadcasting, and Crawford Broadcasting. The Rick and Bubba show, which is syndicated to over 25 stations primarily in the Southeast, originates from Birmingham's WZZK-FM. The Paul Finebaum sports-talk show, also syndicated to a network of stations mainly in Alabama, originates from WJOX.
Birmingham is home to EWTN, the world's largest Catholic media outlet and largest religious network of any kind broadcasting to approximately 118 million homes worldwide.
Visitors and tourists can watch City Vision TV to find out where to eat, shop, and sight see around the Magic City. City Vision TV is a new, but growing, local station available in most hotel rooms throughout Greater Birmingham.
Birmingham has one of the most extensive networks of highways and roadways in the Southeast. The city is served by three Interstate Highways, Interstate 20, Interstate 65, and Interstate 59, as well as a southern beltway Interstate 459 and the Elton B. Stephens (Red Mountain) Expressway (U.S. Highway 31 & U.S. Highway 280). There have been some recent developments with the regional interstate system, including the construction of Corridor X (Future Interstate 22), and the planned future construction of a Northern Beltline corresponding to the existing Interstate 459. Birmingham is served by the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority through the Metro Area Express (MAX) bus system.
Birmingham is served by Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (there is another airport of the same name in Birmingham, England) which serves more than 3 million passengers every year. With more than 160 flights daily, the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport offers flights to 37 cities across the United States. Commercial passenger service through Birmingham is provided by United Express, Delta Air Lines/Delta Connection, American Airlines, Continental Airlines/Continental Express, US Airways/US Airways Express, Southwest Airlines, and Northwest Airlines/Northwest Airlink.
Birmingham is served by three major freight railroads. Norfolk Southern, CSX Transportation, and BNSF Railway all have major classification yards in the metro area. Smaller regional railroads such as the Jefferson Western and Birmingham Southern also serve Birmingham's freight customers. Amtrak's Crescent connects Birmingham with the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Greensboro, Charlotte, Atlanta and New Orleans. The Birmingham Amtrak Station is situated at 1819 Morris Avenue.
The water services for Birmingham and the intermediate urbanized area is served by the Birmingham Water Works Authority (BWWB). A public authority that was established in 1951, the BWWB serves all of Jefferson, northern Shelby, western St. Clair counties. 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. There are plans to pipeline water from Inland Lake in Blount County and Lake Logan Martin, but those plans are on hold indefinitely. Jefferson County Environmental Services serves the Birmingham metro area with sanitary sewer service. Sewer rates have increased in recent years after citizens concerned with pollution in area waterways filed a lawsuit that resulted in a federal consent decree to repair an aging sewer system. Because the estimated cost of the consent decree was approximately three times more than the original estimate, many blame the increased rates on corruption within the Jefferson County Environmental Services Department. One major reason for the higher cost was that Jefferson County had to buy the sewers from the many smaller municipalities in the area to ensure that these sewers were being maintained in a fashion that would meet E.P.A. approval to avoid massive fines for failure to comply with the consent decree. This continues to be a controversial topic in the region.
Electric power is provided primarily by Southern Company-subsidiary, Alabama Power. However, some of the surrounding area such as Bessemer and Cullman are provided by TVA. Bessemer also operates its own water and sewer system[7]. Natural gas is provided by Alagasco, although some metro area cities operate their own natural gas services. The local telecommunications are provided by AT&T. Cable television service is provided by Bright House Networks within the cities of Birmingham and Irondale, and Charter Communications in the rest of metro area.