The Fourth Avenue Historic District 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 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 1982. The listing included 17

contributing buildings 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 ...

on . It includes the 1600-1800 blocks of 4th Ave., N. and part of the 300 blocks of 17th and 18th Sts., N. One reason that it was deemed significant is that the district "is the only place left in the city which tells the story of the

Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

years in Birmingham (1908-1941). Prohibited from patronizing white restaurants, movie theaters, and personal service establishments, blacks developed businesses in those areas to serve their community. They also offered professional services (medical and legal) to the black community. Although now somewhat diminished by the demolition of some structures and the dispersal of black life that has come with integration and suburban expansion, important structures remain which document what was once the center of commercial activity in black Birmingham." It includes works by architects Robert R. Taylor Louis H. Persley, Walter T. Woods and others. It includes

Art Deco architecture 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 United ...

and Victorian commercial architecture. It includes: *

Alabama Penny Savings Bank 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 buil ...

, aka Pythian Temple, which was already separately listed on the National Register. *Colored Masonic Temple, a seven-story building With

References

National Register of Historic Places in Birmingham, Alabama Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama Art Deco architecture in Alabama Masonic buildings in Alabama {{Alabama-NRHP-stub