Above Birmingham, Part 1 **new pics on page 2**

Randy Sandford · #1 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 7:35 AM**

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NEW PICS ADDED on page 2
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Inspired by James Bond Agent 007's "USA Sprawl Festival" series (particularly his recent one featuring Birmingham), I decided to put together an extensive aerial tour of Birmingham from the aerial photos available at maps.live.com. And until KCgridlock decides to do a flyover of Birmingham, I present...

Above Birmingham

This aerial tour of Birmingham begins with Downtown followed by the city's south, east, north, and west sides. Then we will explore the suburban metro area moving clockwise from the west to the south.

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DOWNTOWN

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Linn Park
Surrounded by City Hall, Boutwell Auditorum, Museum of Art, Jefferson Country Courthouse, and the Central Library

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Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex
Featuring a 19,000-seat Arena, 3,000-seat Concert Hall, 1,000-seat Theater, 220,000-square-feet of exhibit space, and 100,000-square-feet of meeting rooms.

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Malfunction Junction
In the unusual design of the I-20/59/65 junction on the northwestern fringe of Downtown, the main lanes of traffic cross over so that drivers are temporarily on the wrong side of the road (a tribute to the city's English namesake? LOL)

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SOUTHSIDE

UAB - The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Medical Center
The UAB Medical Center features 6 hospitals: UAB Hospital, Veteran's Administration Medical Center, Eye Foundation Hospital, Spain Rehabilitation Center, Children's Hospital of Alabama, and Cooper Green Mercy Hospital

UAB Hospital (Alabama's largest hospital with 908 beds)

The Kirklin Clinic - designed by I.M. Pei

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Western part of the campus

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UAB Highlands
formerly HealthSouth Medical Center (originally South Highlands Hospital)

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Glen Iris Park
one of the city's earliest enclaves of the rich

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Five Points South

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Ramsay High School

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Vulcan
the world's largest cast iron statue overlooks Birmingham from his perch atop Red Mountain

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The Club
an exclusive private dining club overlooking the city atop Red Mountain

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Highland Park

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St. Vincent's Hospital
My wife and both sons were born here

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Forest Park

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Redmont Park & Milner Heights

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Red Mountain Cut
It took nearly a decade to blast this cut for the Red Mountain Expressway.

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Birmingham Zoo

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Birmingham Botanical Gardens

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Southbridge

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EASTSIDE

Birmingham International Airport

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Woodlawn

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Crestwood North

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Jewish Community Center

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Trinity Medical Center
Formerly Baptist Medical Center-Montclair, this is where I was born.

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Century Plaza

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Eastwood Mall
Birmingham's first mall (1960) which was recently demolished

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East Lake

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Medical Center East

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Huffman

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Jefferson State Community College

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NORTHSIDE

Norwood

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Carraway Methodist Medical Center

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Carver High School

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American Cast Iron & Pipe (ACIPCO)

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WESTSIDE

Baptist Medical Center-Princeton

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Rickwood Field
The oldest surviving professional ballpark in the nation (completed in 1910). Although the Birmingham Barons moved to a newer facility in Hoover in 1987, the annual "Rickwood Classic," a game in which both teams wear period uniforms, is still played here.

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Legion Field
This historic stadium (completed in 1926) was once the site of Alabama and Auburn football games and home to several franchises of now-defunct alternate professional leagues. Today, it is UAB's home stadium, and in 2006, the Birmingham Bowl was innaugurated.

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Birmingham-Southern College
Birmingham's most exclusive private college

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Bush Hills

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Ensley

Ruins of US Steel's Ensley Works

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Jackson-Olin High School

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WEST METRO

Fairfield

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Lloyd Noland Hospital
This historic hospital closed in recent years and is now owned by Miles College.

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Miles College
A historical black college founded in 1905

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US Steel's Fairfield Works

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Bessemer

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UAB Medical West

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McAdory High School

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Alabama Adventure
A theme park featuring Rampage, one of the nation's top-ranked wooden roller coasters

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Donaldson Correctional Facility
A maximum-security prison located in a remote area of western Jefferson County

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Lock 17 on the Black warrior River

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NORTHWEST METRO

Alabama Power's Miller Steam Plant

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I-22
The final section of this eventual Memphis-Birmingham connection is under construction northwest of Birmingham

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Minor High School

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NORTHEAST METRO

Tarrant

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Cathedral of the Cross

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Townhomes in Grayson Valley

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Clay

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Clay-Chalkville High School

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Trussville

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click HERE to continue to Part 2

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James Bond Agent 007 · #2 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 7:47 AM**

Great job Randy!

Glad to see I've got imitators.

peacefu603 · #3 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 7:50 AM**

Great. So many cars!

Sulley · #4 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 7:54 AM**

Birmingham owns all.

Mayfd24 · #5 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 9:05 AM**

Wonderful, I saw part 2 first... and so this thread covered the rest of what I wanted to see... KCGrid will have some work to do to top many of these

mSeattle · #6 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 9:33 AM**

Nice work Randy.

dfane · #7 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 1:17 PM**

very nice pics.

looks like a rich town with alot of big single homes.

STLgasm · #8 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 1:36 PM**

Very cool! Birmingham is not situated on a body of water?

Randy Sandford · #9 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 4:50 PM**

Thanks John, peacefu603, Mayfd24, Marcus, dfane, and STLgasm!

@ STLgasm: No, Birmingham is not located on a body of water. It wasn't founded until 1871 (by that time, railroads had eliminated the need for a city to be located on a body of water in order to thrive).

vjhe · #10 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 5:27 PM**

Whoa!!!!!! The best ever!

KCGridlock, is that you?

vjhe · #11 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 5:46 PM**

woops, my bad.

MplsTodd · #12 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 9:08 PM**

Great tour. I'm flying down to the Florida panhandle next week to help drive my parents back up to the north country. You've convinced me to drive north via Birmingham!! In addition to downtown, I also would like to see the Five Points area.

Randy Sandford · #13 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 10:05 PM**

Thanks Todd, and I'm glad you were inspired enough to visit Birmingham next week!

LSyd · #14 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 11:32 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by MplsTodd

Great tour. I'm flying down to the Florida panhandle next week to help drive my parents back up to the north country. You've convinced me to drive north via Birmingham!! In addition to downtown, I also would like to see the Five Points area.

i recommend a meal at the grill, surin west or jim 'n nicks.

nice work finding these Randy...here's a few i took on a flight to Texas last spring (which show my old apartment building, sadly missing in this thread) showing how they all fit together.

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KevinFromTexas · #15 Posted **Feb 20, 2007, 11:51 PM**

How in the world are you getting the images to be so large? The Live Local Search window view is so small with all that junk at the top. How did you do that?!

I've been thinking of doing the same thing for Austin for which the images are only a year old.

Awesome tour Randy, thanks for sharing!

gilpel · #16 Posted **Feb 21, 2007, 2:06 AM**

Spectacular photos .....look like 3D pick...

Bravo....

James Bond Agent 007 · #17 Posted **Feb 21, 2007, 2:09 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

How in the world are you getting the images to be so large? The Live Local Search window view is so small with all that junk at the top. How did you do that?!

I've been thinking of doing the same thing for Austin for which the images are only a year old.

Awesome tour Randy, thanks for sharing!

I sometimes do that in my sprawl and Germany threads. What I do is take a screenshot of one corner, then scroll the view over to another section of the image, and basically paste the different sections together. I can get a fulll-sized image with 6 screenshots.

Randy Sandford · #18 Posted **Feb 21, 2007, 4:06 AM**

Thanks Steve, Kevin, and gilpel!

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

I sometimes do that in my sprawl and Germany threads. What I do is take a screenshot of one corner, then scroll the view over to another section of the image, and basically paste the different sections together. I can get a fulll-sized image with 6 screenshots.

I can name that tune in 4 notes (only us old fogeys will get that).

If you set your screen resolution to 1280 x 1084, you can create a full-sized image with only 4 screenshots. That's assuming the full-sized images are 2004 x 1336 (which is what all the Birmingham aerials are...I noticed the ones for Atlanta are oriented vertically instead of horizontally and cover less area per image...either they are not as large in size or were shot from a lower altitude...not sure).

Like John said, move the upper left corner of the image as far up and to the left as possible without any graphics appearing in the image (minimize the navigation box first). Hit the "print screen" key, go to MS Paint, set the dimensions to 2004 x 1336 (or whatever the dimensions are for the images you're working with), magnify the upper left corner of the workspace in Paint (and make sure you're scrolled all the way to the top and to the left), paste and move image until the top and left edges are aligned correctly. Then go back to maps.live.com, move the image over until you can see the top right corner, hit the "print screen" key, follow the same directions in a second Paint window, select all and cut the image from that window, magnify the area where the two images overlap, paste and align correctly. Then scroll down until the lower left corner is showing, etc., etc. The only time you'll have to crop the image in the 2nd Paint window before moving to the original window is on the last image when you'll have to crop the right edge.

Of course, if I'm going to use the full-sized image, I always resize it before uploading to the internet (every image in this tour is 900 pixels wide so that people won't get tired of scrolling to the right to see each image in its entirety).

Oh, and one other tip. If you want to create a zoomed in vertical panorama as I have done for some of the images in this tour, just start with the top edge of the image, paste that in the first Paint window, scroll down (the down arrows work best but sometimes the image will shift on the first try and you'll have to move it back to the correct position...after that, it usually works fine...scrolling by hand is very tedious when trying not to move the image to the left or right), paste the next overlapping image in the second Paint window making sure to crop the top and left edges correctly, cut and paste and transfer to the original image, etc., etc. until the image is completed (make sure you have more than enough height in the original workspace, or else you'll run out of room).

Austinlee · #19 Posted **Feb 21, 2007, 9:56 AM**

Really nice tour there Randy!

I can definetly see why they call you the Pittsburgh of the South. With all the US Steel history, and the dense cityscape, and the historic old wealthy industrialists enclaves, along with the typical american sprawling new housing developments, this is truly a accurate portrait of an American city!!

Randy Sandford · #20 Posted **Feb 21, 2007, 2:43 PM**

Thanks PA Pride!