During the latter part of the nineteenth century, company towns became the standard pattern for residential development in Birmingham’s industrial district. Sloss Furnaces established its first company housing at the site of the City Furnaces. Company housing served two purposes: it attracted family men and thus lowered the rate of absenteeism, and it made available a ready supply of labor in case of emergencies.

By the turn of the century, 48 African-American tenements had been erected along 32ndStreet (site of Sloss today). The residents, mainly ex-sharecroppers seeking economic advancements during Birmingham’s industrial boom, called their neighborhood “the Quarters.” They were typical shotgun style structures, with two rooms set on foundation posts and until the 1930s, no indoor plumbing. Drinking and cooking water came from a faucet placed at the end of each row of houses. Rail barrels caught water for the laundry. The company provided electricity and water and was responsible for making routine repairs.

These cottages were rare outside of southern rural states. The form of the house originated in the Caribbean, on Haiti, and was brought to the United States by free Haitian blacks settling in New Orleans and southern Louisiana. During the post-Civil War industrial expansion of the country, the shotgun was a simple house built for the expanding work force. The building tradition was brought north by workers and were eventually found as far north as Ohio.



A shotgun house in its basis form was a one-story, rectangular structure, one room wide and two to four rooms deep. Constructed without hallways, the rooms were lined up, one after the other. The name, by folk tradition, refers to the alignment of the doorways, “so that a shotgun blast through the front door would exit through the rear door.” However, it is more likely that the tern is a corruption of the West African word “to-gan,” which means place of assembly.

Sloss Quarters was not a company town in the strictest sense, because it provided neither company schools nor recreational services. There was, however, a doctor’s office and a commissary, which proved to be the focal point of life in the Quarters. The commissary served as both pay office and mini shopping center, and its location in the Quarters made it convenient.

In the early days workers paid for items bought at the commissary with “doogaloo” or clacker. After the use of clacker declined, families continued to purchase goods at the commissary on credit. Although some Sloss workers found the credit system helpful, others saw it as a way for the company to take advantage of its workers.

Despite the drawbacks, the Quarters provided a relatively cohesive community setting for workers and their families, a community where people had the same customs, traditions, and shared the same burdens. For many it was a satisfying, safe place to live; in the Quarters everybody knew everybody. There were neighborhood gatherings...watermelon cuttings, barbecues, chittlin suppers, dances, ‘platter-parties’, and ball games. And with Thomas School nearby, the children of the Quarters had access to educational opportunities almost unheard of in the South.

Not all workers wanted to live in company housing. Some felt they could get better housing elsewhere, while others wanted to be far away from the controlling hierarchy of the company and its bosses. For many the move to Birmingham meant the chance to have a home of their own, and from 1900-1940, blue collar and middle class enclaves for black families emerged together, often side by side, in a few widely dispersed segregated neighborhoods. Usually, middle-class homeowners were not from the ranks of unskilled labor; rather they were the sons and daughters of laborers, people who had developed careers as skilled craftsmen, teachers, ministers, merchants and professionals.

Sloss Quarters was dismantled in the late 1950s as maintenance and repair became a drain on the company’s resources. At the same time, higher wages and improved public transportation encouraged residents of the Quarters to seek better housing.