The One and Only

I received an e-card with an around-the-world theme from one of the “Whine Ladies” wishing me Happy New Year. This card included several drawings of notable landmarks from capitols around the globe, all with sparkling fireworks erupting overhead. There was Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum, the Opera House, and Statue of Liberty. Needless to say, anyone can fill in the world capitols. I enjoyed the card and the sentiment that went along with it, but it made me think of my own hometown. Excluding any visual reference to the University of Alabama, Crimson Tide, or Title Town, does Tuscaloosa have a symbol of its own? Spurred on by a recent photograph depicting downtown Tuscaloosa in the 1950s in the Tuscaloosa News, I set out to determine what I could call a landmark in the city in which I was born.

The Tuscaloosa News picture encompassed the north side of Broad Street, aka 5^th Street, which is now University Avenue. On the corner of Greensboro Avenue and University Avenue is our skyscraper, the First National Bank. The Bank had a clock on the corner, which is still there, but London already has a clock. Next to the bank was the Druid Theater, the place I spent Saturday afternoons watching The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Three Stooges, and of course the Hercules movies. Tuscaloosa Drug Company, Mangels, Louis Wiesel Inc., Butler Shoes, and Duckworth Morris Insurance Company, topped with nude Mercury, lined the street. None of these businesses are still downtown, so not landmarks. I also remember a flagpole in the intersection of University and Greensboro but the pole is long gone and gone does not a landmark make.

Looking south along Greensboro Avenue, likely candidates include the Austin Building and the Bama Theater. Without H&W Drug Store, Austin is out of consideration leaving only The Bama Theater, which would be an excellent choice except the ticket-booth entrance is not original and the new computerized sign is out of place on the historic building.

Toward the western end of town, Capitol Park contains the ruins of the state capitol building, but unless you are in Rome, who wants ruins to be a landmark? The Tavern, also at Capitol Park, would be a good choice but it is no longer on the original site, landmarks are not movable. Other structures in the downtown area include several churches and City Hall, which was once the U.S. Post Office. There are some 19^th Century houses, including the University Club, the Battle Friedman House (the old library) Jemison-Van De Graaf Mansion, and the Drish House. Over the years, historic buildings have been replaced with hotels, parking lots, and apartment buildings in the name of progress. Of course there is the Queen City Pool without a pool, now a Transportation Museum for whatever that is worth. We obviously do not treasure old historic buildings.

The landmark cannot be the hospital in which I was born, that was blown up in a Burt Reynolds movie and only a sign with the initials NGH (Northington General Hospital) on the entrance remains. My schools are gone – Verner Elementary is now Tutwiler Hall and Tuscaloosa High has been replaced with Central High School. The only school left is my junior high school building, which is now the City Board of Education. Not a notable landmark; changed the name too many times because at one time it was the city high school.

So we do not have an Empire State Building, a Golden Gate Bridge, a Vulcan mooning local areas, or any soon to be torn down statue in a park, but we do have a big city-hometown atmosphere. Several years ago, the city officials spent thousands of dollars to come up with a slogan for Tuscaloosa. The winner of this endeavor is the phrase: The One and Only. You might ask, the one and only what? Surely not the one and only city without a landmark to define that Tuscaloosa is home and the place we want to live.

However, there may be one choice for our landmark – the one and only wooden railroad trestle across the Black Warrior River. The Mobile & Ohio Railroad trestle is a wooden and steel truss bridge that was constructed in 1898 (Tuscaloosa Preservation Society). It’s old, it hasn’t been altered, and it’s still in the original location so it just might qualify as the one and only landmark for my hometown.

Building Art final