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Alabama Penny Savings Bank

Alabama Registered Historic Place stubsBuildings and structures completed in 1913Historic district contributing properties in AlabamaKnights of Pythias buildingsNational Register of Historic Places in Birmingham, Alabama
Alabama Penny Savings Bank Nov 2011 01
Alabama Penny Savings Bank Nov 2011 01

The Alabama Penny Savings Bank, at 310 18th St. N in Birmingham, Alabama, was built in 1913. It has also been known as the Pythian Temple. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.It is a six-story Commercial style building with a buff-colored brick exterior. "It has a strong vertical appearance, emphasized by its proportions and the unbroken rise of four vertical piers." It has a projecting cornice.It is significant as the building of the first black-owned bank in Alabama, which financed construction of homes and churches for thousands of local black citizens. The bank was founded in 1890 and was the second largest black bank in the United States in 1907.It is also significant as "a distinctive local example of 1910s office building design". It was built by a local black construction company and may have been designed by black architect Wallace A. Rayfield, who designed many other buildings for the black community in Birmingham.It is also a contributing building in the Fourth Avenue Historic District.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Alabama Penny Savings Bank (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Alabama Penny Savings Bank
3rd Avenue North, Birmingham

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N 33.515 ° E -86.810277777778 °
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Gray Construction and Atlas RFID

3rd Avenue North 1728
35203 Birmingham
Alabama, United States
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Alabama Penny Savings Bank Nov 2011 01
Alabama Penny Savings Bank Nov 2011 01
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Hugo L. Black United States Courthouse
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The Hugo L. Black United States Courthouse is a United States courthouse of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Located at 1729 North 5th Avenue in Birmingham, Alabama, it was completed in 1987, and named in honor of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on November 10, 1987, through legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Ben Erdreich of Alabama.Funds for the construction of a new courthouse in Birmingham were appropriated by Congress in December 1982, and the following June, the General Services Administration chose the Birmingham architectural firm of Kidd/Ploaser/Sprague Architects Inc to design the building. A location for the courthouse not yet having been determined, the City of Birmingham proposed a lot diagonal to the federal courthouse in use at the time, as part of an effort to promote the downtown area. In 1984, it was reported that the building would be nine stories and 184,000 square feet, with construction to begin in April 1985 and end in February 1987. A 1987 evaluation of work in the city by the architects noted of the building that it "has all of the right monumental materials, but they are organized in a carnival of geometry that fits irregular spaces in a familiar context", further describing it as "a kind of geometrical sculpture of reflective glass atop a stone pedestal that both respects and reflects the two monumental buildings (old US Courthouse and Federal Reserve Bank) across the street".In June 2020, vandals protesting a nearby Confederate monument threw rocks that damaged windows of the courthouse, prompting officials to note that this was a federal offense. In June 2023, Joran van der Sloot was arraigned at the courthouse for the murder of Natalee Holloway.

McWane Science Center
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Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama

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