On Top of the World
Bradley Boyd and reporter Ashley Creek head to the rooftop of an old hotel in Birmingham, Alabama, and find it equipped for a future that never came.
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ED: And now to a story about a different future in the sky, one located a little closer to Earth. It’s a future that’s by now long gone, but you can still see a remnant of it at the top of a 19-story building in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. From the ground, that structure looks like a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower. And looking at it today, you’d have little way of knowing what its intended purpose was when it was erected. It was a mooring mast for Zeppelins.
PETER: When the Thomas Jefferson Hotel was built in the late 1920s, many people imagined that enormous airships would soon be carrying passengers from New York City directly into downtown Birmingham. But less than a decade later, the dream of interstate Zeppelin travel had been extinguished by the explosion of the Hindenburg airship in New Jersey. No Zeppelins ever docked in Birmingham. And the mooring station there is the last one standing anywhere in the world.
Bradley Boyd is a Birminghamian, with a side hobby of exploring the city’s abandoned buildings. Reporter Ashley Cleek accompanied Bradley to the top of the former Thomas Jefferson Hotel and sent back this audio postcard about the ascent.
BRADLEY BOYD: When I first started, the first place I wanted to go was this abandoned building, the Leer Tower. So I’m alone. It’s my first time doing anything. And here I am jumping in this abandoned 20-story hotel. And it was the most thrilling feeling I’ve ever had in my life. The first thing I see when I go in is this giant mirror on the wall. There’s garbage everywhere. There’s a piano. Everything’s falling apart.
[PIANO PLAYING]
And one of the first things that you sense when you get into any abandonment is this unmistakable smell, this odor. It’s not repulsive. It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s just this smell. It’s good to me. I love it.
[FOOTSTEPS]
ASHLEY CLEEK: Yo.
BRADLEY BOYD: Howdy.
BRADLEY BOYD: So I make my way to the top, floor by floor. It tops out in this mechanical room where all these machines are, and then there’s a door that opens up. And bam. Here at the top, you can see—everything in the city, you can see from there. It’s always sunny up there.
ASHLEY CLEEK: There it is.
BRADLEY BOYD: There you go. There’s your baby.
[LAUGHTER]
BRADLEY BOYD: I just know that it’s a docking station for these floating things that used to be, but to know that it was there so that Zeppelin’s could come dock there is insane. It’s made of iron. It’s black. It’s got giant, like, chunky round rivets in it. It’s really only about 30 feet tall. The tip has been knocked off. You could probably—if you were so inclined—you could probably climb to the top of it, but when you stand under it looking up, it still feels like really big and really strong. It probably is just as sturdy now as the day it was built.
ED: That’s Bradley Boyd with reporter Ashley Cleek. If you have a story you’d like to share on our show about a little known piece of history that happened near you, we’d love to hear it. You can email us at BackStory@virginia.edu.
[MUSIC – JOHNNY CASH, “COME TAKE A TRIP IN MY AIRSHIP”]
JOHNNY CASH [SINGING]: Come take a trip on my airship. Come take a trip ’round the stars. Come take a sail around Venus. Come take a sail around Mars. No one to watch—