Public Institutions, Birmingham is a handsome and solidly built city with wide avenues, handsome dwellings and imposing pub lic buildings. It has a large government build ing, county court-house, new city hall, scraper" business houses, a fine public library, high schools and other educational buildings and numerous handsome churches. Among other notable buildings are the Jefferson Thea tie, the Auditorium, Saint Vincent's Hospital, Hillman's Hospital, Union. Station and the Hill man, Tutwiler and Molton hotels. There are 16 or more public parks, the most prominent of which are the Capitol, North Birmingham, Bait Lake and Lakeview. The city has an extensive waterworks system, with a reservoir on Shade's Mountain, 225 feet above the city, a Waring system of sewage and over 180 miles of street railroads, connecting not only with immediate suburbs, but with points many miles away.
The educational facilities are of the best. There are five high schools and 60 elementary schools besides colleges of high repute,includ ing a dental college. Its charitable institutions include Saint Vincent's Hospital, Hillman Hos pital, Mercy Home, Jefferson County Alms house and the Boys Industrial School at East Lake.
Birmingham is now gov erned by five commissioners, under whose administration much effective work has been accomplished with a great saving of expendi ture. The fire department has been modern ized by the installation of motor driven appara tus. The assessed valuation of the city's real estate in 1913 was $86,073,000, the tax rate $1; the same year 3,641 new buildings were erected at a cost of $6,429,737.
History.— Birmingham is entirely the crea tion of the last 30 years. The future of the district was foreseen as early as 1849, but the first attempt to realize it was about 1870 by a company which bought a made tract of land around Elyton, then the county-seat, now a suburb of Birmingham, which sought to make that the centre of the new development. It failed because prices were too high, and an other company bought a tract to the east, where stood a single shanty on the spot where the Florence Hotel now stands, which they named Birmingham. The next year a small iron fur
nace was erected and this started up coal min ing. Coal had hitherto lacked a market, but in 1874, 50,400 tons were mined. The demand of the Oxmoor furnace for coal led, in 1879, to the opening of the Pratt mines, and with this began the era of great growth. The population leaped in the next decade from 3,000 to 26,000, a growth unparalleled in United States history, except by Chicago. Retarded for some years by the collapse of the boom, it still had grown 46.7 per cent by 1900. The city is the business hub of a large group of cities and towns, built up by the same interests and but little removed from each other. A number of these have been incorporated under the name of Greater Birm ingham. The largest of these surrounding towns is Bessemer, 11 miles away; others are Ensley, Pratt City, Elyton, Gate City, Irondale, Powderly and Smithfield. When Birmingham was settled, the county had 12,345 inhabitants; in 1910 it had 226,476, practically all the growth of the Birmingham district. The rapidity of the city's present growth is shown by the fact that in a single year (1913) 3,641 new buildings were erected at a cost of $6,429,737. Birming ham is becoming popular as a convention city. Its numerous auditoriums together with the modern hotels and apartment buildings enable the city to accommodate some of the largest gatherings in the country.
By the census of 1880, the first after Birmingham's settlement, the popula tion was 3,086; in 1890, 26,178; in 1900, 38,415; in 1910, 132,685, many surrounding precincts having been annexed in 1903 and 1910; in 1915 (civic estimate), 190,000.
Armes, Ethel, of Coal and Iron in Alabama); Gates, J. W., Birmingham will have 1,000,000 Popula tion in 1920) (Birmingham 1907) ; (Birming ham — Its Resources and Advantages' (Bir mingham 1904); !Jefferson County and Bir mingham —Histoncal and Biographical' (Bir mingham 1911).