Birmingham Uncovered

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When Nathan Rosenfield brought Jacobson’s Department store to Birmingham in 1950 there was only one huge problem-shoppers didn’t have anywhere to park! Rosenfield would radically alter not just the shopping landscape forever but the urban planning one as well. This is the third episode in a limited series with the Birmingham Shopping district where we look at the evolution of Birmingham’s retail environment.

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material, check out our website. To learn more about the Birmingham Shopping District and to see upcoming events, check out their website. 

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.

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For some Birminghamsters, the story of department stores in Birmingham begins and ends with Jacobson's, but the story doesn't start there. In 1896, two Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe changed the retail environment in Birmingham forever by opening up the first department store. Gitel and Morris Levinson weren't just retail pioneers though, they were also the first Jewish family in Birmingham and can tell us a lot about the Jewish American experience in the late 1800s and beyond.
This is our second episode in a series with the Birmingham Shopping District, where we look at the evolution of Birmingham's retail environment.
To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material, check out our website. To learn more about the Birmingham Shopping District and to see upcoming events, check out their website. 

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.

Send us Fan Mail

   When Edwin O’Neal opened his harness shop in 1885 he probably never dreamed of exactly what the landscape of Birmingham would look like at his retirement. His business straddles the period where horsepower was shifting from literal horses to how we measure a car’s engine’s power. This is a the first episode in a limited series with the Birmingham Shopping District where we look at the evolution of Birmingham’s retail environment.

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material, check out our website. To learn more about the Birmingham Shopping District and to see upcoming events, check out their website. 

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.

Send us Fan Mail

What Birmingham would be like today without Martha Baldwin is hard to picture. She has an outsized legacy that would be far too much to cover in one episode, so over however long this podcast runs we are going to be breaking up her life and legacy into thematic chunks. And since I write the scripts, the first chunk that I’m choosing is how Martha, in an age before women could yield political power, used instead the power of threats to do two things that would change the Birmingham landscape forever: getting a new home for the library and the construction of Baldwin School.


To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material, check out our website.

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.

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Robert Opdyke took a train from Birmingham to Detroit and was never seen again…until his son received an alarming telegram several years later. Robert’s story is one of business and failure in mid-late 1800s Birmingham.

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material about the mill and the Opdyke family, check out our website.

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers

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John  Allen Bigelow was a man of many talents but taking life too seriously wasn’t one of them. Come along with us as we sneak into the Union Army to fight in the Civil War twice, form a love connection with a good friend’s sister, steal a train, brand ourselves as a one-armed insurance salesman and give future historians headaches with our inability to walk in a straight line with one of Birmingham’s most colorful characters.

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material about John Allen Bigelow, check out our website.

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.

Send us Fan Mail

The world has always been ending, which means there's always a candidate or two around waiting to be cast in the role of the Antichrist. In the late 1700s, a friend or family member of Rhoda Bingham Daniels wrote an 8 page manifesto about how Napoleon Bonaparte was the figure the book of Revelations in the Bible warned about.

Why Napoleon? And what exactly did the end of the world look like for an American in the late 1700s?

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material, check out our website.

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.

Send us Fan Mail

Rhoda Bingham Daniels was a direct descendant of a famous puritan minister back East, which meant letters from the family contained more hellfire and information on how babies are evil than you might expect. This story has everything: TULIPs, sex cults, lying toddlers and an intimate look at religion and family life in early 1800s Birmingham.

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material about the Binghams, check out our website.

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, and our amazing volunteers.

Send us Fan Mail

It took George Taylor 4 weeks along the Underground Railroad before he achieved freedom. In the following decades he got married, adopted a child and helped to found a still active church community in Kansas before settling in Birmingham, where he became the village’s first Black property owner. Come along with us as we trace George’s epic journey and talk about our continuing research into Birmingham’s Underground Railroad Connections.

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material about the Taylors, check out our website.

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum, our amazing volunteers and the descendants of the Taylor family.

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Ziba Swan was an early Birmingham settler who is perhaps best known today for donating the first ½ acre of land to make Greenwood Cemetery, but he was a lot more than just a land-donator. Ever wondered just what a battlefield doctor during the War of 1812 would have done? Come along and find out.

To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material about Swan, check out our website.

For questions, concerns, corrections or episode suggestions please reach out to us at [email protected].

Special thanks to the Birmingham Area Cable Board for PEG grant funding that made this podcast possible. Also thanks to past and present staff of the Birmingham Museum as well as the Swan family.