BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) – As the summer winds down, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) is offering a unique look at the city’s 99 neighborhoods.
On Friday, July 31, BCRI introduced an exhibit by artist and Birmingham native Emily Rice called “The 99”.
The exhibit features wooden homes made by hand alongside works created from soil, sediment, and vegetation collected throughout Birmingham. Rice also used GIS coordinates to help tell the stories of people she met through her work in the neighborhoods. “I plugged in those coordinates and was able to see if people had potentially uploaded a photo of a restaurant, a house somewhere nearby,” said Rice. “So, some of those are incorporated. So, it has this combination of the historic photographs that tell a tale of what Birmingham was and also how Birmingham is today.”
Before Rice spoke about the exhibit, BCRI historian Barry McNealy shared stories of how some of the city’s neighborhoods like Elyton got their names. “It was Ely’s town’” explained McNealy. “It was named after a federal land agent, William Ely, that came and surveyed what we live in today in the year 1820, one year after Alabama became a state. But that Elyton produced the Elyton Land Company.” Elyton Land Company, said McNealy employed William Mudd, one of the founders of Birmingham for whom the city was almost named…