AL -- Birmingham -- Vulcan Park and Museum -- Museum:
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VULCAM_161109_006.JPG: The Material of Success:
Birmingham was founded and grew into the largest industrial center in the south because of the iron and steel industries. Local foundries transformed enormous quantities of Birmingham iron into useful products like stoves, sewing machines, fire hydrants, manhole covers, and iron pipe that were shipped throughout the country.
VULCAM_161109_019.JPG: Many Industries
VULCAM_161109_024.JPG: Iron Furnace
VULCAM_161109_025.JPG: Iron Ore Mining
VULCAM_161109_028.JPG: Foundry
VULCAM_161109_031.JPG: By-products
VULCAM_161109_032.JPG: Limestone
VULCAM_161109_035.JPG: Clyde Love
VULCAM_161109_037.JPG: Workers: the Fourth Ingredient
VULCAM_161109_353.JPG: Bronze statuettes like this one were sold for two dollars each in Birmingham and at the St. Louis World's Fair to help fund Vulcan's creation. Many people bought two and used them for bookends.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Vulcan statue
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Vulcan statue is the largest cast iron statue in the world, and is the city symbol of Birmingham, Alabama, reflecting its roots in the iron and steel industry. The 56-foot (17 m) tall statue depicts the Roman god Vulcan, god of the fire and forge. It was created as Birmingham's entry for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 World's Fair) in St. Louis, Missouri. The statue is the world's largest iron-ore statue, and among the nation's tallest.
History
Construction
Commissioned by the Commercial Club of Birmingham, Italian-born sculptor Giuseppe Moretti began designing the monumental figure in 1903, using a 6-foot (183 cm) tall model to study the form. He next sculpted a clay master model in an unfinished church in Passaic, New Jersey, and this was then divided into sections and transported by railroad to the Birmingham Steel and Iron Company for the preparation of casting molds for the iron.
The Vulcan statue consists of 29 cast-iron components with connecting flanges that are bolted together internally. The heaviest section is his whole head, which weighs 11,000 pounds (4,990 kg). Iron forgemen designed and executed the connection details for the statue, which originally had no internal framework and was self-supporting. The grey iron castings were made in Birmingham entirely from locally produced iron.
The completed weight of the god Vulcan's figure alone is 100,000 pounds (45,359 kg). When Vulcan's anvil, block, hammer, and spearpoint are added, the statue weighs a total of 120,000 pounds (54,431 kg) and it stands on a pedestal that is 123-foot tall (37 m). The statue has a chest circumference of 22 feet 6 inches (7 m) and a waist circumference of 18 feet 3 inches (6 m).
1904 World's Fair
The statue was shipped to St. Louis as Birmingham's entry into the 1904 World's Fair. Vulcan dramatically demonstrated the mineral riches and manufacturing capabilities of the Birmingham area whil ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (AL -- Birmingham -- Vulcan Park and Museum) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2016_AL_Vulcan_Vw: AL -- Birmingham -- Vulcan Park and Museum -- Vista (35 photos from 2016)
2016_AL_Vulcan_Pk: AL -- Birmingham -- Vulcan Park and Museum -- Park (61 photos from 2016)
2016_AL_Vulcan_5Pts: AL -- Birmingham -- Vulcan Park and Museum -- Revitalization of Five Points South (47 photos from 2016)
2016 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Seven relatively short trips this year:
two Civil War Trust conference (Gettysburg, PA and West Point, NY, with a side-trip to New York City),
my 11th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including sites in Utah, Nevada, and California),
a quick trip to Michigan for Uncle Wayne's funeral,
two additional trips to New York City, and
a Civil Rights site trip to Alabama during the November elections. Being in places where people died to preserve the rights of minority voters made the Trumputin election even more depressing.
Number of photos taken this year: just over 610,000.
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