Birmingham's statue of Vulcan, god of fire and forge, is one of the high points of a visit to the city, and it stands on the city's highest point—but that doesn't mean it's always gotten the respect it does these days.
The statue, standing on a 123-foot pedestal on top of Red Mountain. has survived a long history that has swung between adoration and neglect, and a near brush or two with death since it was created for the 1904 World's Fair in Saint Louis.
On display in the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy at the 1904 World's Fair
Birmingham was just over 30 years old then, and already a center of iron mining and iron-and-steel making, and the statue, the world's tallest made of iron, was meant to make that point to the world.
Even its construction was huge. Local boosters hired Giuseppe Moretti, an Italian sculptor working in New Jersey. Moretti created a six-foot version, and then a master-copy in clay for molding the 56-foot work, which he built in an abandoned church. Then it was disassembled into 29 sections and shipped to Birmingham for molding.
Views from the tower, and from the park, are a highlight
The cost for building and moving the statue was about $15,000, or about $225,000 in today's money; Moretti's fee was $6,000, or about $90,000. At fifty tons for the body itself, and another 10 tons for the spear, anvil and hammer it's easy to see why it was shipped in parts and assembled at the fair, where it won a Grand Prize at the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy.
And then the statue's troubles started. When the fair ended, Vulcan was taken apart again and shipped 'home' to Birmingham—and then left in pieces by the tracks because of unpaid freight bills.
Eventually, Vulcan was moved to the State Fair grounds, but his arms were installed incorrectly, and his spear had been lost by the tracks. During that period the empty hand was occasionally shown in ads holding a Coca-Cola bottle, an ice-cream cone and even a jar of pickles.
In the late 1920s he was disassembled again for inspection, and left that way for several years before being reassembled again in the early 1930s. Then, in a way, the Depression came to poor Vulcan's rescue. Federal Works Progress Administration funds created a new park on top of Red Mountain as a permanent home for the giant statue, now installed on a 123-foot pedestal with a long, winding set of stairs inside. And he got a new spear.
Looking down the stairs, from the top. I took the elevator, for sure!
But Vulcan's troubles weren't over, not by a long shot! To keep him solidly anchored on his new tower, the hollow interior of the statue was filled up to chest level with concrete. Over the years the difference in rates of heating and contracting and expanding between the iron and the concrete left him in danger of collapse.
On the ground in 1999 at Robinson Ironworks during his most recent repair
In 1999, he was hauled down again, disassembled again, stored in the parking lot again, and finally shipped off to a Birmingham ironworks for major repairs. The concrete was replaced by a stainless-steel skeleton. While he was away, the tower was repaired, a new observation deck installed, and a new parallel tower was installed to provide an elevator to the top.
And there he stands today, his bare buttocks 'mooning' the nearby Homewood neighborhood. A small museum near the base tells the story of Vulcan's travails, and of Birmingham's history as an iron-and-steel center.
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