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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