The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-12-27

One of the most Iaudatory articles on Birmingham written during the year is by "Holland' in the Daily National Hotel Reporter of December 23. Among other things. the writer says:
 ''rhe American Birmingham occupies a strikingly prophetic site--a spacious and undulating Alabama amphitheatro, modern Marathon expanse, fer it's ample industrial and commercial az grandizement encircled with scenic and commanding highlands for alluring park and residential developments ter raced boulevards and avenues. coun- try clubs. princely palaces, colleges, churches. schools, and all types of fast multiplying metropolitan units The original or business section is mainly level or mildly rolling, with broad streets and walks at old fla snioned right angles. encompassing fine and fabulous squares or blocks, substan~ tially builded and polka dotted with skyserapers, and teeming with traders. trolleys and trucks like Broadway and State street. Premier business buil6- ings, churches, historic homes and once starved and bony humble corner sites and slots are now surrendering to the new century Birmingham commercial Juggernaut for Aladdinesque terminals, hotels, banks, department concerns, clubs, theatres and lodge temples, and imperatively new Washingtonian fed eral and postal building, that Is to sig Eifieantly occupy a square on Fifth avenue and cost into millions.
 'N0 1onprar- nineteenth century Fifth avenue, Bir- mingham. was deemed fashionably sub urbanic or remotely ruralistic. Now it is sentineled With an imposing union station, Tutwiler and Motion hotels hubbed, and what with the new postof- flee seems clearly the destined cross. town main retail artery and prone nade Al First avenue and Twentieth street there begins a grand canyon of shadowy skyserapers, east, west and north, that speedily threatens tc en- compass and encircle Capitol park. and elevate or trench the midtown swath of 5 railroad tracks.
 The Jefferson white obelsk is not only the loftiest topped in the tropical states but the fourth tallest skyscraper III 'iiV dAiiNVu iillel- eACeeueu only Tn New York, Cincinnati and Seattle, al though Boston is now said to be after Birminghams persimmon wreath with a 32-story pinnacle in the fain direc- ton of St. Peters gilded gateway.
 Atop the Jefferson eerie, in the clouds if not in the sky, the royalistic Birmingham Newspaper club is sump tuously domiciled occupying three airy stories or two and the granite roof ledge, whereon in season-from April to November-daring diners may de- vour viands and literally hobnob with the allegorical angels. The Birmingham Greeleys are reputed to have mined and expended approximately $50, 900 in rich ly and luxuriously equipping their Swabian Alps nest, and that impres- sion is derived on landing in the sof, cushioned rotunda, the library lounge parlor, the infectious buffet, and the white latticed, vine and rose wreathed cafe and ballroom in the azure, wherein 1 transcendent political, financial, the. atrical, musical and debutante meteors are captured, dined, wined, tangoed ant given the (highest) time of their lives l Iingeniously and socially. doubt if ever l Woodrow, the Kaiser. Villa or a migra.