New campus facility opens, 1954

The Birmingham Extension Center opened June 6, 1954, as the first facility the University of Alabama had constructed anywhere in the state for one of its extension programs.  The building was located on 20th Street South at the corner of 7th Avenue and was connected to the university's basic sciences building [today's dental school].  At the time the building was completed, 20th Street also served as Highway 31 and Highway 280 through Birmingham's Southside neighborhood.  The new facility housed classrooms, laboratories, administrative offices, the university bookstore, and the university's non-health sciences library.  The building would be renamed two years later as Tidwell Hall in honor of extension dean Robert E. Tidwell, and in later decades would serve as the home of the UAB School of Public Health.  Tidwell Hall was demolished in 1998 to construct the Kaul Human Genetics Building.

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In 1959 a baseball team was organized at University Hospital.  It was comprised of staff from the hospital and from across the Birmingham medical center.  The team competed in the Northern Division of the Birmingham Amateur Baseball Association and played home games in the city's Jordan Park, located just a few blocks west of the hospital at 8th Avenue South and 11th and 12th Streets South [the location of today's university soccer and baseball fields].  This first team photograph was taken on the roof of the hospital's Jefferson Tower.

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On November 26, 1958, an open house served as the official dedication of a new home for the nursing school operated by University Hospital. Prior to its acquisition, this building had been home to a beloved-Southside barbecue restaurant, known as Dr. Gus' BBQ. The program's occupancy of the building was short-lived, however, as the building was demolished in 1966 to make way for the Center for Developmental and Learning Disorders [Sparks Center].

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In 1955 the University’s five-year old Town and Gown Theatre program was moved into a new home, the Clark Memorial Theatre on Highland Avenue. The first production in this new location was Candles in the Canebrake, which opened on February 14, 1955, and told the story of the Vine and Olive Colony settlement near Demopolis, Alabama.

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On the 60^th anniversary of that inaugural performance, the UAB Archives announced the opening of a major collection of Town and Gown archival material, with over 5,000 photographs, hundreds of playbills and event programs, several scrapbooks, and administrative files. Click here to review Record Group 45 or here to contact the UAB Archives for additional information.

Volker (far right), the founding dean of the dental school at UAB, spent three months in Thailand as part of a US State Department education program. Volker's trip was the first of many for him and for other UAB faculty, a tradition that has continued for six decades. Today UAB is formally affiliated with several health science institutions in Thailand.

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The three students here, (left to right) Randall O. Laffre, Jr., Robert J. Eustice, and Gerald R. Rowe, were members of the first class to graduate from the School of Dentistry. Fifty-two men, all veterans of World War II, matriculated on October 18, 1948, and fifty would graduate on May 31, 1952.

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On June 10, 1958 university officials obtained 10 ½ blocks of land adjacent to the Medical Center. The Urban Renewal Project allowed the campus to grow west from its original four blocks. This photograph of the 800 block of South 17th Street – the site currently occupied by the Learning Resources Center – clearly illustrates the substandard conditions found immediately west of the campus. University Hospital and the Veterans Administration Hospital are visible in the background.

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Dr. Reynolds, an Alabama native, selected the medical school in Birmingham as home for his collection of over 6,000 books, manuscripts and artifacts. The Lawrence Reynolds Library was dedicated on February 2, 1958. Since 1974 the Reynolds Historical Library has been housed within UAB's Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences. The library collection has grown to over 13,000 items and the library is one of three units that comprise UAB Historical Collections.

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Nurse Vivian Brown instructs hospital orderlies in the use of the Tank Respirator (iron lung) as part of University Hospital's in-service education program.

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The dental school was founded in 1948 and the first class graduated in 1952. The clinic facility pictured was completed in 1951 as a portion of the Medical and Dental Basic Science Building (renamed the School of Dentistry Building in 1976).

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Jo Ann Hyatt, assistant instructor of nursing, examines the rare books housed in the Reynolds Historical Library at the University of Alabama Medical Center, Birmingham, 1958.

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