Downtown Birmingham holds the Thomas Jefferson Tower at 1623 2nd Avenue North, a 19-story building completed in 1929 as the 350-room Thomas Jefferson Hotel. Completed in 1929 as the 350-room Thomas Jefferson Hotel, it even has a tower in its roof intended to be a zeppelin mooring mast. The building’s story begins with the Union Realty Company, headed by Henry Cobb, organized in November 1925 in the office of architect David O. Whilldin, who prepared the design for a $1.5 million project.
The Foster-Creighton Company of Nashville was selected as contractor and work began here in May 1926. Progress halted in April 1927 when one of the project’s financiers, the Adair Realty and Trust Company of Atlanta, failed. A new holding company was formed and work resumed in July 1928.
Costs climbed to $2.5 million before the hotel opened on September 7, 1929, and its opening week offered nightly banquets and dances featuring an orchestra from New York. It has worn several names — The Thomas Jefferson Hotel, the Cabana Hotel, the Leer Tower, and finally the Thomas Jefferson Tower. Notice the tower above, a mast once meant to moor a zeppelin overhead.