Flintridge Building
building in Alabama, United States
The Flintridge Building (formerly the Flint Ridge Building) is a historic office building in Fairfield, Alabama, in metropolitan Birmingham. From 1951 to 1964 it served as the headquarters of the southern division of United States Steel and housed nearly 1,500 employees. In 2004 the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Sited on a ridge on E.J. Oliver Boulevard near Miles College, the building overlooks the Fairfield Works. The front facade of the building features projecting, glass-enclosed rooms resembling stadium pressboxes, which provide a view of the ironworks.
History
The building was developed in 1951 to serve as the new headquarters of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company (TCI), a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Steel. It was designed by Jack B. Smith of the Chicago firm of Holabird, Root & Burgee. Upon completion, TCI relocated its offices from the Brown Marx Building in downtown Birmingham to the Flint Ridge Building.
In 1964 U.S. Steel moved most of its executive staff to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, changing the character of the building. U.S. Steel eventually offered the five-story, 314,000-square-foot building to the Fairfield city government for a nominal price, but the offer was not taken.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Flintridge Building” as building in Alabama, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as building in Alabama, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5459600. Authority coordinates are 33.476, -86.920. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1964 and 2004.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Flintridge Building”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Flintridge Building primary sources, Flintridge Building archive and Flintridge research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Flintridge Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.