Neon in B’ham: Memories of “The People’s Station”

July 19th, 2006 · View Comments

From time to time in this series, we’ll take a look at older neon signs that are not being operated throughout the city of Birmingham. There is not a better sign to start this component of the series than the sign formerly used by WENN 107.7 FM. The sign is located on 5^th Avenue North between 16^th and 15^th Streets North. The sign represented both the AM and FM stations owned by prominent African American businessman A.G. Gaston (link courtesy of Bham Wiki, see this previous link). The call letters are currently used for ClearChannel Communications owned Hallelujah 105.5 FM, a gospel station. The original frequency has returned to its roots as an urban contemporary station. Click here to view the Wikipedia entry on the history of the station. Click here to view the signs previously covered in this series. Look this weekend for a page created to make it easy for those interested in this study of Birmingham’s neon signs to look back at previous entries.

Cheers.

Tags: Architecture · B'ham Wiki · Neon in B'ham · Photographs · Random shots · WENN-FM · neon signs · people

View Comments so far ↓

1 trav // Jul 21, 2006 at 7:52 am

This is a really neat series and I have enjoyed looking at the pictures.
Do you have the locations listed for all of these signs?
I’m thankful for the post here listing where the radio station sign is, but some of the others. I’m unfamiliar with.

Thanks, in advance for any help,
Trav
2 Dre // Jul 21, 2006 at 8:02 am

This weekend I plan to add links to a map to show where the locations of the signs are. It should be completed no later than Sunday afternoon. Some of the listings already have their locations linked to a Google map, but it’s tough to tell where the links are sometimes due to the theme I’m using. I’m looking at changing the theme later on this summer.

Thanks for reading.
3 Pamela Smith // Dec 6, 2006 at 6:10 am

What happened to the gospel station 105.5 fm? Why didn’t we get a warning about he changes that were gonna take place.

Thanks in advance,
Jasper, AL Resident
4 Welcome the Vulcan, farewell gospel; the radio station carousel continues // Jul 6, 2009 at 12:45 pm

[...] to say that it’s not already starting. I noticed several people stumble across a post that talks about an old, non-functioning neon sign in the city’s Civil Rights district. It used to be called “The People’s Station.” [...]