The Rosedale Historic District in

Homewood, Alabama Homewood is a city in southeastern Jefferson County, Alabama, Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. It is a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, located on the other side of Red Mountain (Birmingham), Red Mountain due south of the city ...

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 ...

which 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 2004. The listing included 143

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 . Another part of the Rosedale Neighborhood is included in the NRHP as Rosedale Park Historic District (Homewood, Alabama). It is a hilly residential neighborhood, located somewhat inaccessibly over Red Mountain ridge, from

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 ...

. Developers could not develop the property for white families, but the lack of transportation options did not dissuade black families, with less choices, from choosing to live there. It grew as a working and middle class African American neighborhood. It was surrounded by white suburbs and not allowed to expand. It has many of "the best examples of working and middle class architecture, including residential/domestic, commercial, and religious, built c. late 1880s-1953 by and for African Americans in Jefferson County and the State of Alabama. Vernacular residential styles include many shotgun houses, particularly the concentration that remains on Loveless Street as well as a variety of bungalows and duplexes." With The history of the Rosedale Neighborhood has been documented by several local history projects by students and faculty from Samford University.

References

Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama National Register of Historic Places in Jefferson County, Alabama Victorian architecture in Alabama Gothic Revival architecture in Alabama Shotgun architecture {{Alabama-NRHP-stub