The Alabama City Wall Street Historic District is a

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

Gadsden, Alabama Gadsden is a city in and the county seat of Etowah County in the U.S. state of Alabama. It is located on the Coosa River about northeast of Birmingham and southwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is the primary city of the Gadsden Metropolitan ...

. Wall Street was the main commercial street in the town of Alabama City. The city was founded in 1891 halfway between Gadsden and Attalla, with intentions of becoming the major industrial hub of

Northeast Alabama Northeast Alabama is an ambiguous term, which may include the cities of Anniston, Gadsden, and Talladega, their surrounding areas, as well as the geographical northeast extreme of the state of Alabama. The county inclusion varies, and under some ...

. In 1895 the town landed its first major concern, a

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning (textiles), spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Althou ...

built by the Dwight Manufacturing Company of

Chicopee, Massachusetts Chicopee ( ) is a city located on the Connecticut River in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 55,560, making it the second-largest city in Western Massachusetts after Springfield. C ...

. Its second major factory, the Alabama Steel and Wire Company, was opened in 1902. By 1915, a thriving commercial district had grown up around 7th Avenue, which became known as "Little

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

". A fire in 1927 damaged or destroyed many structures along Wall Street and Meighan Avenue. The city would never recover from the loss, especially as neighboring Gadsden flourished; Alabama City voted to merge into Gadsden in 1932. The architecture of the district represent the changing commercial styles of the 1910s through the 1930s. Most are constructed in simple, brick styles with

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). Whe ...

roofs, some with more decorative brickwork.

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

-influenced features such as

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

coping and glass tile accents are present on later buildings. Other notable buildings are an Art Deco fire station (built 1936) and the

Classical Revival Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing style ...

library (built 1938). ''See also:'' The district was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2002.

References

National Register of Historic Places in Etowah County, Alabama Historic districts in Etowah County, Alabama Gadsden, Alabama Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama {{Alabama-NRHP-stub