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.

Image ID: P16.1.1, #0311