My Favorite Views

National Post Card Week
May 3 - 9, 2015

In 1917, Harry Gardiner climbed to the top of the Empire Building in downtown Birmingham, Alabama.  A crowd of 35,000 people gathered to watch "the Human Fly" scale the sixteen story building.  The Birmingham Ledger newspaper sponsored the promotional event.   This image was the cover of my book "Birmingham: Then & Now. (2007)

This postcard is from JD Weeks and is number 71 in a limited edition of 100.

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Harry H. Gardiner (1871 – after 1923), better known as the Human Fly, was an American man famous for climbing buildings. He began climbing in 1905, and successfully climbed over 700 buildings in Europe and North America, usually wearing ordinary street clothes and using no special equipment.

The climb on this postcard took place on January 30, 1917. 

Greetings from Birmingham Alabama

This is a large letter Curteich postcard and is from 1973. 

Alabama's Robert Trent Jones Golf Trial at Capitol Hill, Prattville, Legislator # 18

Two RTJ Golf Trial sites, Grand National and Capitol Hill, named # 1 and # 2 best public facilities in the country by Golf World
Play two days for $119 or three days unlimited for $144
2009

Alabama Space and Rocket Center
Huntsville, Alabama

World's Largest Space Museum
Tranquility Base

Passengers experience 'g' forces and a simulated form of weightlessness aboard Spaceship Lunar Odyssey, at the Alabama Space and Rocket Center.  The futuristic spacecraft flies 46 passengers on simulated flights to the moon everyday from the world's largest space exhibit, located in Huntsville, Alabama.

Gulf Shores
Orange Beach

Sugar-white beaches and emerald Gulf waters.
Alabama
2010

Point Clear, Alabama - located on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay.  At this point is the Grand Hotel which is one of the outstanding hotels in the South.

Color by Thigpen

Beinville Cross, Beinville Square
Mobile, Alabama

This public park in the center of the business section was set aside for park purposes when the city of Mobile was chartered by the first Alabama State Legislature more than a hundred years ago.  A granite cross erected by the Colonial Dames of Alabama near Dauphin Street bears the inscription: "To Jean Baptiste La Moyne, Sieur de Beinville.  Native of Montreal, Canada, Naval Officer of France, Governor of Louisiana, and founder of its first capital, Mobile, 1711."

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The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America is an American organization composed of women who are descended from an ancestor "who came to reside in an American Colony before 1750, and whose services were rendered during the Colonial Period." The national headquarters of the society is at Washington, D.C., at Dumbarton House. The organization was founded in 1890 with the Alabama branch being incorporated February 22, 1898.

Scene in Bellingrath Gardens, Mobile, Alabama

the Bellingrath Gardens are located on Picturesque Isle-Aux-Oies-River, about 17 miles from Mobile on U.S. Highway 90.  The natural beauty of this estate is made more beautiful by the thousands of Azalea Shrubs, which burst into bloom the latter part of February.  At the height of the flowering season the blooms completely hide the limbs and leaves of these plants.  Solid masses of flowers in shades of white, pink, salmon, red, orange and cerise.  

Alabama

1- Lake and Swans in Avondale Park, Birmingham
2 - Entrance to Fort McClellan, Anniston
3 - Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library, Tuscaloosa
4 - Vulcan, The Iron Man, Birmingham
5 - Alabama State Capitol, Montgomery
6 - Bunker Tower, Mt. Cheaha State Park
7 -  Noccalula Falls, On Lookout Mountain
8 - Pulpit Rock, Cheaha State Park
9 - Noccalula Falls, Gadsden
10 - River Terrace, Bellingrath Gardens, Mobile
11 - Bankhead Tunnel Under Mobile River, Mobile

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Park, Mobile, Alabama.  The monument in this Park was erected in 1926 by the Mothers Army and Navy League.

Kodachrome by Jack Taylor

Azaleas, Easter Lilies and Camellias line the lovely winding walks, shaded by moss-draped love oaks.  One of the many enchanting Beauty Scenes at World Famous Bellingrath Gardens, near Mobile, Alabama.

Kodachrome by W. Lavender

National Postcard Week
May 1-7, 2011

Sloss Furnace
Birmingham, Alabama
Photo by John Morse
Birmingham Postcard & Collectibles Club

limited edition 42 / 100

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center
Huntsville, Alabama
2012

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The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama is a museum operated by the government of Alabama, showcasing rockets, achievements, and artifacts of the U.S. space program. Sometimes billed as "Earth's largest space museum", astronaut Owen Garriott described the place as, "a great way to learn about space in a town that has embraced the space program from the very beginning."

Opened in 1970, just after the second manned mission to the lunar surface, the center not only showcases Apollo Program hardware but also houses interactive science exhibits, Space Shuttle and Army rocketry and aircraft. There are also more than 1,500 permanent rocketry and space exploration artifacts, as well as many rotating rocketry and space-related exhibits.