May 9, 1925    

The Redmont Hotel in Birmingham opened with great fanfare on May 9, 1925. The 14-story hotel was very unusual for its time. Each guest room had a private bath, as well as chilled water and electric fans. One of the suites was called “the Lucky Governor’s Suite” when it served as the local headquarters for the successful Jim Folsom and George Wallace gubernatorial campaigns of the 1960s. After stints of bankruptcy and changing hands of ownership, the hotel in 2014 began a $20 million upgrade project and reopened in summer 2015 as part of the “Curio Collection by Hilton.”

Read more at Bhamwiki.

The Redmont Hotel, photographed in 1939. Part of the Birmingham News Photograph Collection at the Birmingham Public Library Archives. (Birmingham Public Library Archives, Bhamwiki)

Redmont Hotel, 2009. (Photograph by Josh Self, Flickr)

The Redmont Hotel in Birmingham, 2011. (Chris Pruitt, Wikipedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.