Today’s guest columnist is Eva Dillard.
Have you ever visited the San Antonio Riverwalk?
Or driven two hours north to the Chattanooga River Walk?
Tampa, Louisville, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Providence, Spokane all have river walks—and the list goes on and on.
But not Birmingham, even though long ago plans envisioned a city built around water.
The Birmingham Historical Society’s archives tell the fascinating story of what could have been.
In 1925, Birmingham Parks and Recreation Board commissioned a “thorough and scientific study of park requirements and facilities” for the city.
At the time the study was commissioned, Birmingham’s parks comprised 600 acres (or less than 2%) of the city’s area. The Board acknowledged the need for more dedicated public spaces to promote the “physical, mental [and] moral” development of the area’s citizens.
Although recently formed, the new Board knew exactly what they were doing.
They conducted a wide search and ultimately chose Olmsted Brothers to conduct the planned study. Led by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the firm released “A Park System for Birmingham” (the Olmsted Plan) on May 1, 1925.
Olmsted was the son of America’s first landscape architect, responsible for Central Park, the U. S. Capitol, and Biltmore Estate among many notable projects.
Olmsted’s plan for Birmingham was no less visionary.
He conceived of a city centered around Village and Valley creeks as well as the area’s other natural features. Large parks and athletic fields for the public would be developed around the creeks and in their floodplains.
The city would connect by wide boulevards and build parkways along ridgetops and mountains to capture scenic views. Strikingly for that time, the plan even included recommendations for parks and play space for the city’s African American population.
Olmsted envisioned boat lagoons like Chicago’s Washington Park or parks similar to Boston’s Riverway and Alewife Brook.
Even in the 1920s, he immediately understood the problem of flooding in Jones Valley.
He knew that preserving and protecting the creek floodplains could mitigate that risk while offering local citizens an opportunity for beauty and recreation.
According to Olmsted, “the problem and the opportunity” were the same. “Such a development would permit an open channel solution” to the drainage and flooding problems presented by Village and Valley Creeks while serving as a beautiful focal point for Birmingham’s development.
At the time the plan was written, the necessary land was available and its market value was low because the land was in the floodplain.
So why wasn’t the plan implemented?
The usual suspects helped kill the plan.
Emerging industry needed the water from local creeks and their workers needed the cheap housing that was ultimately constructed in the floodplains. The Parks and Recreation Board turned over and the new members were not as educated about the plan.
Although some parks were built and existing parks improved, many of the plan’s recommendations were never pursued.
Instead of serving as a focal point for a system of beautiful green spaces, Village and Valley creeks became urbanized, polluted streams flooding so frequently that, from 1988 to 2007, Birmingham had to initiate a series of homeowner buyouts.
Meanwhile, places like San Antonio have capitalized on their natural features instead of paving them over.
San Antonio’s journey to a river walk began at roughly the same time Birmingham began consideration of the Olmsted Plan.
Today, their Riverwalk offers a vibrant cultural center and meeting place for locals. It is a huge draw for tourists and millions visit every year.
The Riverwalk offers a mix of restaurants, shops, entertainment venues, businesses, museums, historical sites, and recreation areas. And, according to the San Antonio River Foundation, the Riverwalk’s economic impact is estimated at $3.1 billion per year.
In Birmingham, we are largely back where we started.
In a 2005 preface to the re-publishing of the Olmsted Plan, the Birmingham Historical Society highlights current efforts to return to the spirit of the Olmsted Plan in identifying opportunities “to save vast tracts of scenic land or recreation to improve our water and air quality and to develop new means and routes of transportation along our stream beds.”
The community’s embrace of projects like Railroad and Red Mountain parks pay respectful homage to the Olmsted Plan. But retrofitting parks and projects in the present is far more complicated and expensive than following a good plan from its inception.
By failing to implement the Olmsted Plan, the Birmingham region missed a signature opportunity to define itself for years to come.
Today we are still playing catch up.
In a future column I’ll write about another potential watershed moment for the Greater Birmingham area.
I hope we get this next one right.
For the past fifteen years, Eva Dillard has been the Staff Attorney at Black Warrior Riverkeeper. She lives in Homewood .
David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
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Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com
I appreciate the history lesson but everything is always so negative..about the opportunities missed. There are many and we know about many of them.
Can you or anybody pose solutions sometimes to redress the mistakes that have been made? Can somebody give some hope for a future for our city.?
This column is becoming more about the Defeated City and not the Comeback City. It just feels the negative self esteem and image that this city has of itself unfortunately.
JR, I’m not happy with the negative tone of some recent columns, but there are lessons to be learned. Our greater Birmingham area is risk adverse and not willing to invest in the future. Eva Dillard, the guest columnist, made a commitment in the column you just read to have a follow up column on future opportunities. Hopefully we can learn from our mistakes. It does pain me, as is does you. to discuss our shortcomings. I strongly believe the best is ahead for our region.
Several years ago, I was told that a curse was put upon Birmingham in the early 1800’s by the Chief of the Cherokee Nation and other indigenous tribes due to the “destruction of the land” by the white industrialists. The tribes were forced to move to Oklahoma and beyond in 1830. The “Curse of the City” stated that the “ Valleys would never prosper.” If you study the lack of vision, the failures and missed opportunities we have experienced over the years, I believe the Curse is still active.
And belief in these kind of fantastical ideas keeps this city behind in so many area. This is not even Cherokee land..it is Creek land. Furthermore, this is far from the only native area destroyed by industrialization. Just ridiculous.
I don’t know about a river walk for Birmingham. But I can speak to the value of simple greenways. After our son died in 2014, we planted a willow oak in his memory on the Little Shades Creek Greenway in Vestavia, near the house where he grew up and the high school he attended. We check on its progress most times we return to Birmingham (it’s grown to 50’ tall in 8 years!), enjoying the view of the creek down below, listening to the gurgling stream, and watching for hawks in the treetops. Although it’s not one of the area’s most heavily visited greenways, I’m sure the neighborhood residents appreciate it—as do those who walk and jog the paths along streams in other parts of the city. Never forget to take advantage of the natural bounty you already have, and don’t worry if tourists don’t travel and spend money to enjoy them with you.
Thanks, Eva. Great article!
Awesome article. I never knew this. I didn’t perceive it as being negative, though I understand some might. Rather a lesson in history that shows us a teachable moment; one hopefully we will remember the next time around an opportunity presents itself.
Frederick Law Olmsted was brilliant; do I remember correctly that he designed Highland Park as well?
I suspect there are still jewels we could glean from the Olmsted Brothers’ plans to add sparkle to future developments. Are their plans for Birmingham available to view online?
Thank you, Eva and David, for this fascinating and inspiring article!
Way too costly these days to try to makeup for missed monumental opportunities like that now. Just like when when B’ham said no to the major airport that eventually went to the ATL instead & has since turned Atlanta into a world class city! Then Birmingham didn’t do anything to try to get the SEC Championship game back from Atlanta. All of that national & international exposure along with the missed revenue it would have brought to the local economy year after year, smgdh. Some missed opportunities just can’t be made up for & these are definitely some of them. However, I hoped Birmingham & the whole state recognizes its past mistakes & missed opportunities & capitalize on the future ones!
Yes, regretfully we did not follow the Olmsted plan, and are now trying to make up for that with some of our wonderful park and greenway projects. We have another opportunity now to make another leap forward, with the city’s sustainability planning getting underway and a master plan process ready to begin to review our city park system. Hoping for good things to come out of these concurrent efforts.
should of, could of, would of.,……
More history of golden opportunities that never happened.
If we could combine the idea of a riverwalk with LL’s idea of having Beluga Whales in Birmingham…..well, that would draw people from all over. Imagine having a riverwalk with gondolas and spotting Beluga whales swimming nearby. It would be the Reeses Peanut Butter cups of ideas!
Someone needs to do a story on how the former Buffalo Braves of the NBA almost relocated to Birmingham in the late 70’s when the BJCC was first built but ended up losing out to San Diego, where they were renamed the Clippers. That was the closest Birmingham has ever or will ever come to have landed a true big league team.
Small minds ended up blowing that opportunity as well.