History

Birmingham in 1927 was a steel city at the height of its industrial prosperity — a population of nearly 260,000 and a commercial core that could support an entertainment venue of national scale. The Publix Theatres chain, the exhibition arm of Paramount Pictures, selected Birmingham as the site for a flagship southern house designed to compete with the grandest palaces in Chicago and New York. The result was the Alabama, built at a cost that reflected both the ambition of its owners and the booming confidence of the Jazz Age.

The atmospheric concept, pioneered by architect John Eberson from the early 1920s onward, replaced the conventional proscenium-box interior with a stage surrounded by faux outdoor walls — balconies, arches, towers, and garden elements — beneath a domed ceiling fitted with a Brenograph projector that cast moving clouds across a field of electric stars. The illusion was that the audience sat not in a theatre but in an open Moorish courtyard on a warm Alabama night. This sensory environment, unprecedented in the South, drew audiences who had never experienced anything comparable.

The Alabama remained a first-run cinema through the studio era and into the television age. By the 1980s it faced the fate common to urban movie palaces: declining patronage and the cost of maintaining a vast ornate building. Birmingham Landmarks, Inc. acquired the property and undertook restoration, reopening it as a performing arts center. Today the Alabama hosts classic film series, concerts, and special events; the Wurlitzer organ, restored to full function, is played by resident organists at screenings in the tradition of the silent-film era.