The Alabama Penny Savings Bank, at 310 18th St. N in

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

, was built in 1913. It has also been known as the Pythian Temple. It 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 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 In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

. 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 law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

in the Fourth Avenue Historic District. With

References

Knights of Pythias buildings National Register of Historic Places in Birmingham, Alabama Buildings and structures completed in 1913 {{Alabama-NRHP-stub