The Finley Roundhouse
Near Birmingham, Alabama
On Birmingham's north side, just off the interstate, a massive curved concrete building sits in various states of preservation. This is the Finley Roundhouse, built in nineteen fifteen by the Southern Railway as the centerpiece of its Finley Yard , named for the railway's former president, William Wilson Finley. At its peak, the roundhouse held twenty-five locomotive berths arrayed around a central open-air turntable, servicing the engines that kept Birmingham's coal and iron moving.
It is the largest reinforced concrete roundhouse in Alabama, and one of only three surviving railway roundhouses in the entire state. The Finley Yard was dismantled in nineteen fifty-two when Southern Railway shifted operations elsewhere, but the roundhouse remained. It was added to Alabama's Places in Peril list in twenty seventeen.
Preservation advocates continue working to save it.
