Auntie Yock

=Lower Broadway from 1984 has entered the chat= Oh, howdy!

^The height is incredible. The base at street level looks cheap and ugly, like plastic containers. Badly needs a redesign there.

They have broken wind on it, so I heard. I think Oprah is in on it.

Technically, Birmingham really is the largest city (at least population center), with Mobile being 2nd. But Birmingham City is largely hemmed in as to where it can annex, as it is just 150 square miles. It is surrounded by scores of smaller suburban towns. If it could merge with Jefferson County, it would be closer in size to Louisville (about 700k), though that won't happen. Mobile has a slightly similar problem with suburbs that are separate towns. If it could merge with its same-named county, it would have 400k people. Birmingham has been drastically losing population since 1960 (when it had 340k people in a smaller area of land). Mobile peaked in 1960 as well, and has been stagnant ever since (though it has annexed out to at least maintain somewhere close to its 1960 figure of 200+k). Montgomery has now moved into 2nd place (as Birmingham has dropped from 2nd to 3rd just since 2010/20), but it is unusual in that there are no incorporated towns within its same county hindering its ability to annex (except for one other, which only incorporated recently, Pike Road). Although it has only annexed just 160 sq miles, a smidge bigger than Birmingham. It's also facing a similar problem that Birmingham has since the 1960s, with White Flight (as has Mobile). Huntsville, albeit technically "largest", has 225 square miles, making it 1/3rd larger in land area than Birmingham, and it has been annexing quite liberally into its neighboring county of Limestone and apparently into Madison to its south. As late as the 1950s, Huntsville was the 14th(!) largest city in Alabama with only 16,000 residents, partly because it occupied a tiny area of land and left its suburbs as unincorporated. It was actually smaller than Mobile's largest suburb of the time, the infamous Prichard. At the same time, Birmingham had 325,000. The annexations caused Huntsville to jump from 16k in 1950 to 72,000 in 1960 and 140k in 1970 and an additional 80k in the past 50 years. As much as we wish these cities to reflect their size in their "downtowns" today, it's usually when they became larger that will reflect that. If that only occurred after the 1960s, their downtowns will likely be underwhelming, but if before (like Birmingham), they'll look disproportionately larger than expected. A huge example of that, which is technically the largest city in Virginia, the resort city of Virginia Beach, had just 8,000 people in 1960, now fast approaching a half-million due to its merger with its county. Anyone looking there for a substantial downtown of skyscrapers will be in for a huge letdown, as the only towers are the beach hotels, and in the original town center, there's very little to constitute anything resembling a downtown. This was just a small town surrounded by suburbs extending out from Norfolk (which is more of a traditional city) and Portsmouth (another actual city with much historical buildings near their riverfront). Huntsville is not nearly as underwhelming as VA Beach, but compared to Birmingham and its downtown skyscrapers, it's a bit of a letdown.

I'm not opposed to parks in the core, and you're correct about livability, just that this particular property hasn't lived up to its potential. It has always seemed awkward in its being wedged up against a solid wall of buildings, and the more recent problems with homeless and criminality there. I think a park might be better suited to the former Hotel Tulane property a few blocks to the west. It is a more open and larger space that is more conducive to a pocket park.

^Giarratana should be allowed to put another skyscraper on this lot. That park has always been a disappointment.

Beta blocker?

You're looking at one. I enjoyed visiting the rotating restaurant in the '70s, the Polaris Room. Had a unique view of downtown.

It's a '70s design.

^Farewell, old friend.

^Those motels were nice. Pull right up to your room and unload your car. Didn't cost $500 a night, either.

Those groups are for photos and feel-good memories, not political diatribes.

Absolutely hideous. We went from a neo-art deco original proposal to what looks like the entrance to a cheap Mexican restaurant. Appalling.

Edgefield was the name in the description and on the photo, as posted by BNABreaker. He had no reason to doubt it. I didn't either, until I noticed something was quite amiss with the placement of the buildings and that the L&C would have to be 180 degrees in opposition to this shot if it were viewed from across the Cumberland. You were correct about the general location of the photo. I think UTGrad may be right about the location, taken from just above Archer on Southside. However, it may also have been taken from 10th, in a location that may now be the interstate. Enormous swaths of that area were demolished en masse not long after this photo was taken. No problem. This isn't the first time an old photo was posted here with the wrong caption and flipped the wrong way. No reason to think it was incorrect, just a nice color photo of an inner-city neighborhood prior to "revitalization." It piqued my curiosity, because I wanted to find the exact spot today, only upon closer inspection, noticing the buildings faced the wrong way and it couldn't be East Nashville it was taken from. Too bad the photographer didn't note the precise location when they took it (unless they did and the caption was lost to time).

**Correction: You did agree with me on its location being South/SW of downtown and not Edgefield, which I overlooked. But the photo is still inverted/flipped. ---- Original: I'm sorry to disagree with you, but the photo is most certainly inverted. The buildings are all wrong, that view of the L&C can only be viewed from the south/southwest (before the Viridian blocked the angle), you would not see that side of the building if it were across the river in Edgefield/East Nashville. Take the photo and invert it to its proper view ( Flip image online (pinetools.com) ), and the buildings will line up correctly. I used the old United Methodist Publishing House (almost brand new in the photo) as a point of reference, as this is due south of its location at the junction with 8th and Demonbreun, and you can also see part of Cannery Row. None of those would be visible if this was east of the river. As I've said, I haven't nailed down the precise street, but it is in the vicinity of south of Division somewhere between 9th-12th.