1 of 3
Photo by Frank Couch.
Butch Baldone, below, began working part-time at his father’s tailor shop in a bustling downtown when he was only 11 years old. He is still tailoring in Birmingham a few blocks away on Second Avenue at 23rd Street.
2 of 3
Photo by Frank Couch.
3 of 3
Photo by Frank Couch.
Downtown Birmingham, once neglected, has come back big-time in recent years, drawing visitors to such attractions as Regions Field and Railroad Park and offering a wide variety of new bars, breweries, restaurants and music venues.
Butch Baldone — a longtime downtown merchant and owner of Baldone Tailoring Co. — is among the cheerleaders. This recent vitality “definitely helps the entire city scene,” he said. “Anytime you can get some vibration from people coming around, that’s good.” And the return of the Birmingham Barons baseball team from the suburbs “is a plus for the whole city, no doubt,” he said.
But downtown will have to become much busier than it is now to rival its peak in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, Baldone said.
“[Downtown] was so full of people, it was hard to walk on the sidewalk,” he said.
On a recent day in March, Baldone offered his memories of a busy, dynamic post-World War II downtown filled with movie houses, cafes and other small businesses –before the City Center was challenged by the suburbs and the shopping malls that served them.
Baldone’s father, Frank, opened the business in 1935 and rented two other storefronts downtown before buying their present building — on Second Avenue North near 23rd Street — in 1968.
Born in 1941, Baldone began working at the shop when he was 11 years old for $3 a week. “That was good money,” he said.
He wore dress pants, a nice shirt and a tie as he ran errands for the shop all over town.
“The metropolis was so busy,” Baldone said. “Everybody came downtown. Every day was like Saturday.” The city even had “a different aroma” in those days, thanks in part to the five-and-dime stores such as Woolworth’s, he said.
“You could smell the cotton candy and the caramel popcorn,” he said. “Today the aroma of the city is gasoline.”
Baldone said he would later learn tailoring from Frank Grisanti, a master tailor who had a shop on Third Avenue North.
The coming of the malls “really hurt Birmingham because it decreased the population of downtown,” he said. The malls also helped damage the prospects of small businesses — “the bloodline of any big city” — according to Baldone.
“By taking it to the outskirts in these malls, you decreased the number of small business operations [downtown],” he said.
The decline of downtown as a shopping area became clear by about 1970, when things “got rough for everyone in business,” Baldone said. “People quit spending money. They quit coming to town.”
Baldone, whose father died in 1976, kept the shop going by doing alterations and repairs and renting tuxedos. By about 1977, business “started coming back, if you could hang on,” he said.
He said he still mourns what he calls a huge loss of small downtown merchants since the glory days.
“There used to be 10 hot dog stands; now there’s one,” he said.
And Baldone said he is not an optimist regarding the prospects for a retail revival downtown.
“I don’t think small business will ever come back,” he said.
The malls retain a critical advantage in drawing shoppers, Baldone said.
“They have convenient, no-charge parking,” he said.
In response, the city of Birmingham should write fewer parking tickets and, instead, give all downtown visitors two hours of free parking, Baldone said.
The residents of the lofts and other apartments downtown have not yet made a big, positive impact on retail in the area, Baldone said.
“You would think it would,” he said, but added that those residents badly need more places to shop downtown.
“Many of these people living in these lofts are at UAB, and they walk or ride a bike to work, and they love it, but for them to really do shopping, they have to get in their car and go to the perimeter.”
The longtime business owner expresses a deep passion for the Magic City. “I love Birmingham, Alabama, because it is a wonderful city, and the people are great,” he said.
It is also a misconception that the City Center is dangerous or crime-ridden, Baldone said. “Downtown is one of the safest places to be, and a lot of people don’t want to believe that, but it’s true.”
And Baldone remains optimistic that Birmingham, including downtown, can flourish as long as residents look past their differences and share a vision.
“I think people are seeing that a vibrant city is valuable and important, and the only people who can affect it are people — people of all color, all race, all religion,” Baldone said. “That’s what America is about. It’s a melting pot.”
