Ensley and Tuxedo Junction

By David B. Fleming and Mary Allison Haynie

With dreams of building a vast steel production operation, Memphis planter Enoch Ensley founded a city in the wooded valley at the heart of Jefferson County, Alabama. He named the city Ensley, after himself, and established the Ensley Land Company to acquire and develop 4,000 acres for industrial facilities and a town. As field workers left their farms to work in steel mills and businesses sprang up on the valley floor, Ensley became a diverse place of hopes and desires. A strong community of churches, businesses, civic clubs, and neighborhoods developed around the factories and railroads. Jazz music was the social thread of Ensley's African American community, known as Tuxedo Junction. Musicians such as Erskine Hawkins famously mastered the style. The annexation of Ensley into Birmingham established the "Magic City" as the largest and wealthiest in Alabama and the heart of the Southern steel manufacturing economy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439626580

David B. Fleming

Author David B. Fleming earned his bachelor of arts in history and his master�s degree in public private management. Coauthor Mary Allison Haynie has all but her dissertation for a doctorate in public history and holds a master�s degree in historical administration. Alabama natives with careers in historic preservation, Fleming and Haynie have a deep appreciation for the rich heritage of the area.

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INTRODUCTION

After the Civil War, Southern states like Alabama were looking for ways to recover from the devastation wrought by the five-year conflict. Many Southern cities were destroyed, the Southern economy was in ruins, and almost an entire generation of Southern men had been killed or wounded in the war. While Alabama did not see as many major battles and as much devastation as states like Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee, she did possess something crucial to the Confederacy that made her a target for the Union—her ability to produce weapons. The state’s arms production, ranging from swords to cannons and ammunition, made Alabama the Arsenal of the Confederacy. The same natural resources that allowed Alabama to produce weapons when matched with the ambitions of men would lay the groundwork for a place like Ensley, Alabama, to be born.

As early as the 1820s, geologists had come to know that central Alabama had all the ingredients necessary to support a major manufacturing industry. The abundance of coal, limestone, and iron ore made it possible to build businesses to produce iron and steel and push Alabama into the industrial future. That future had to wait until after the Civil War and for the meeting of the Alabama and Chattanooga and the Louisville and Nashville Railroads in the middle of rural Jones Valley in Jefferson County. This new infrastructure would lead to the creation of the city of Birmingham and unlock the entrepreneurial spirit and vision of men like Enoch Ensley.

Beginning in the early 1880s, Enoch Ensley, a wealthy Tennessee merchant and planter, acquired property just west of Birmingham and adjacent to the Pratt coal seam. It was his vision to develop a major steel production facility, and it was here that he would found the town of Ensley. As the president of the Ensley Land Company, he assembled 4,000 acres of land. Ensley also served as president of the Tennessee Coal Iron and Railroad Company (TCI) and invested in a majority of the corporation’s stock. The vision for Ensley was for a modern industrial town laid out in a grid pattern that paralleled the proposed iron and steel plant and featured a complete sewage system. Ensley was ready for business.

The town of Ensley was slow to grow in the 1890s, but boomed in the early 1900s. Its population was recorded as 10,000 people in 1901, had doubled by the time of Ensley’s merger with Birmingham in 1909, and by 1934 had reached 41,000. People moved to Ensley from all over the world as they sought a new life and opportunity. Ensley became a bustling mix of people and cultures. African Americans made up a large portion of the population, but there was also a significant Italian American population. A 20-block residential area along Avenue F became known as Little Italy. Ensley also boasted significant Jewish, Greek, and Irish communities as well.

Even though Ensley had merged with Birmingham, it retained a strong sense of separate identity, often called a city within a city. Ensley’s business district was a regional shopping destination that rivaled downtown Birmingham. Business there expanded well beyond the expectations of a simple company town to include major department stores, banks, theaters, jewelers, restaurants, lawyers, dentists, and more. The importance of Ensley is reflected in its architecture. Ornate structures with intricate details suggest that architects and builders wanted to make a grand statement. This is most noted in the 10-story Ramsay-McCormack Building on the corner of Avenue E and Nineteenth Street. Started in 1926 by industrialist and businessman Erskine Ramsay, the skyscraper was the tallest building in the city outside of downtown Birmingham. From its top floor, one could see the entire sprawling TCI operation, now owned by U.S. Steel, and for miles around.

The Tuxedo Park section of Ensley developed primarily as a residential area for African Americans employed at the U.S. Steel Ensley Works. A small but vibrant African American business district grew around the intersection and turnaround point of the Wylam and Pratt City streetcar lines. The location came to be known as Tuxedo Junction, where steel mill laborers shed their work clothes, rented tuxedos, and danced the night away in class and style. The area has significance in American musical history. Tuxedo Junction was immortalized in a big band song of the same name written by a local jazz musician Erskine Hawkins. When the Glen Miller Orchestra recorded the song in the 1940s, it became a long-running national best seller. Hawkins was a Birmingham jazz trumpeter whose parents took up Erskine Ramsay on his offer to pay families to name children after him. Many African American jazz musicians honed their craft in Tuxedo Junction and went on to play across the country and influence the art.

Ensley continued to prosper during the 1950s as steel from its plants helped America build during its post–World War II boom and