From a blanket on the grass at Birmingham’s Railroad Park, you can hear the crowd as the bat cracks against a ball inside Regions Field. You can crack a can of Snake Handler, local Good People Brewing’s citrusy double IPA, on the patio adjacent the stadium. Or join the ticket holders queuing just seven blocks away on Third Avenue North, bathed in the soft, neon glow of the massive Alabama and Lyric theater marquees, waiting to see Graham Nash or Gov't Mule.

We aren’t looking at Alabama’s biggest city through rose-colored glasses. Birmingham has arrived. Again. It’s a destination—for historic architecture, old theaters, James Beard award-winning Southern food. And yet, just under a decade ago, it wouldn’t be mentioned in the same sentence as other thriving food-and-culture centers of the South: Nashville, New Orleans, Charleston, Atlanta. You might have passed through the city to visit the Civil Rights Institute, a benchmark along the Alabama Civil Rights Trail. Or maybe you were checking in on a friend or child at Samford University. But you weren’t planning a vacation here.

The ‘Hardest Hit’ City in America

Before it became a violent backdrop for boycotts, police brutality, and riots during the Civil Rights movement, Birmingham began her days as a renowned steel town. This “Pittsburgh of the South” rose quickly in the late 1800s and early 1900s as one of the only places on earth where iron ore, limestone, and coal were discovered within miles. Seams of red hematite iron lent the town’s Red Mountain its moniker, and when it rains hard here, the groundwater still bleeds a furious, brick hue.

All the money bore beautiful cast-iron buildings, Victorian red-brick factories, and Craftsman homes. President Roosevelt declared Birmingham “the hardest hit in America” when one-third of its citizens went on relief during the Depression. Decades later, the city made national headlines yet again. On September 15, 1963, four girls—ages 11 and 14—were murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. That same year, the lunch counter sit-ins put a national spotlight on police brutality.

Alabama Theater. Getty

“I remember hearing the infamous church bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church from my Sunday School classroom at First United Methodist. I was 15 years old. It sounded like the world ending,” says Tom Cosby, who worked for Birmingham’s Chamber of Commerce for 35 years before retiring in 2013. He transitioned into a role as one of the city’s most avid historic preservationists and today is an active fundraiser. Cosby has helped raise $11 million to restore the Lyric Theater and $15 million for the city’s 56-foot-tall Roman god of fire, Vulcan—the world’s largest cast-iron statue—among other causes. A lifelong native and one of her most passionate citizens, Cosby has a contagious enthusiasm for Birmingham’s potential.

“We had beautiful department stores downtown,” Cosby recalls. “People would window shop in droves. There once were 26 theaters, with the Alabama Theater and the Lyric being two of the most elegant. Birmingham was widely considered one of the top theater towns in America. Unfortunately, there was also serious racial injustice, and it understandably caused a lot of heartache.”

Birmingham was widely considered one of the top theater towns in America. Unfortunately, there was also serious racial injustice, and it understandably caused a lot of heartache.

For downtown, things were taking a serious downturn. “People fled,” continues Cosby. “They left for the suburbs, which happened in a lot of American cities.” People questioned if Birmingham’s original heart could recover during the 1980s and ‘90s. The city’s central tracks were a particular blight, with no street lights and a growing drug problem.

Today, that once seedy stretch displays an entirely a different landscape. “There were a lot of dominoes that fell the right way to enable Birmingham’s rebirth, but I think Railroad Park was probably the single most important one,” Cosby says of the now 19-acre green space. “So much of what Birmingham has to offer travelers now started because of that park.”

Regions Field and adjoining Railroad Park are hallmarks of a new Birmingham. Getty

Restoration Everywhere

That park is truly something. It beat out Manhattan’s High Line for the ULI Open Urban Space Award in 2012, and it features a large lake, a stream system, native plants, a birch grove, a skate park, a bike share and—perhaps what Birmingham most desperately needed—a turning point for a vibrant, community-driven future. The $23 million required to create it was a mix of private and public funding—and it was raised in only three years. Sixty-four million was invested to build the adjoining Regions Field, designed by HKS of Dallas (known for the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas). This relocated the Double-A Birmingham Barons from the suburbs back to downtown.