These storefronts along Fourth Avenue mark Birmingham, Alabama's historic Black commercial heart. Here, on 4.2 acres that include the 1600–1800 blocks of 4th Ave., N. and parts of the 300 blocks of 17th and 18th Streets, N., 17 contributing buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. This district "is the only place left in the city which tells the story of the Jim Crow years in Birmingham (1908–1941).
During those years, barred from white restaurants, movie theaters, and personal service establishments, Black residents developed businesses here to serve their community, and they offered professional services — medical and legal — to their neighbors. Though the district is now somewhat diminished by demolition and by the dispersal of Black life that came with integration and suburban expansion, important structures remain to document what was once the center of commercial activity in Black Birmingham. Look up at facades shaped by Art Deco and commercial Victorian architecture, and notice buildings by architects such as Robert R. Taylor, Louis H. Persley and Walter T. Woods.
Along this street, 17 buildings remain, some by Taylor, Persley and Woods, each storefront still speaking for the business of Black Birmingham.