A.G. Gaston Motel

Last updated

Gaston, A.G., Building
A.G. Gaston Motel, Birmingham, Alabama LCCN2010636968.jpg
A.G. Gaston Motel in 2010. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith.
USA Alabama location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location1527 Fifth Ave. N, Birmingham, Alabama
Coordinates 33°30′54″N86°48′51″W / 33.51500°N 86.81417°W / 33.51500; -86.81417 (Gaston, A.G., Building)
Arealess than one acre
Built1959 (1959)
Built byBank Building and Equipment Corp.
ArchitectLangston, Perry C.
Architectural styleInternational Style
NRHP reference No. 00001028 [1]
Added to NRHPSeptember 11, 2000
A.G. Gaston Motel, Birmingham, Alabama LCCN2010636969.tif
A.G. Gaston Motel in 2010. Photos by Carol M. Highsmith.

The A.G. Gaston Motel is a historic building and former motel in Birmingham, Alabama. [2] [3] In 1963 during the Civil Rights movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference used a room in the hotel as their headquarters, which was later bombed by terrorists.

Contents

History

Built in 1954 by local businessman A. G. Gaston. [2] It served as premium accommodation for African American travelers and was listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide. [2]

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference used room 30 as its headquarters for leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others, to plan portions of the 1963 Birmingham campaign of the civil rights movement. [4] On May 10, 1963, the motel was bombed by white supremacist terrorists. [5] After discrimination in public accommodation was outlawed, the motel's business declined in the 1970s. It was used as senior housing from 1982 to 1996. [5]

Since 2017 it is owned in part by the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, the National Park Service, and the City of Birmingham. [4] [6] It has been designated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of America's National Treasures. In summer of 2023, the site is set to open to the public for history tours. [2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. November 2, 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Peñaloza, Marisa; Elliott, Debbie (June 22, 2023). "Birmingham honors the Black businessman who quietly backed the Civil Rights Movement". NPR.
  3. ↑ Sutton, Marie A. (November 4, 2014). The A.G. Gaston Motel in Birmingham: A Civil Rights Landmark. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN   978-1-62585-132-1.
  4. 1 2 "Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birmingham 'war room' is the heart of a new national monument". Los Angeles Times . January 14, 2017. ISSN   2165-1736 . Retrieved October 8, 2023.
  5. 1 2 "Proclamation 9565: Establishment of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument" (PDF). January 12, 2017. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 22, 2023. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
  6. ↑ "A Birmingham Motel Is Part Of A Civil Rights National Monument". NPR. June 10, 2017.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.