July 6, 1976

The Vulcan statue was placed on the National Register of Historic Places July 6, 1976. Vulcan is the largest cast iron statue in the world at 56 feet tall. It was created by Italian-born sculptor Giuseppe Moretti to represent Birmingham in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal government’s official lists of sites, buildings, structures, districts and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance.

Read more at Bhamwiki. 

Guiseppe Moretti poses with a model of his sculpture, commissioned in 1903. (Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Sculptor Giuseppe Moretti, center, and a group of workmen pose before the lower right leg of the statue of Vulcan in 1904, the year it was displayed at the St. Louis World’s Fair. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

Giuseppe Moretti’s Vulcan statue stands amid other displays in the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. It earned silver medals for its creator, Giuseppe Moretti, and iron and steel manufacturers James R. McWane, and J. A. MacKnight, who commissioned the monumental sculpture. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of the A. S. Williams III Americana Collection. The University of Alabama Libraries)

Colossal iron statue of Vulcan, in the Mines Building, St. Louis World’s Fair, c. 1904. (Underwood & Underwood, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Vulcan Statue & Park, 1996. (Richard K. Anderson, Jr., Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

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