Phelan Park

Site of the Magic City Blues Society Phelan Park Music Series.

Phelan Park was established in 1907 and named after the Phelans, a prominent Birmingham family. The park was built up as part of a Works Progress Administration project in the late 1930s. The WPA was a New Deal program designed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to give work to needy Americans and pull the United States out of the Great Depression. The exterior rock walls around Phelan Park were constructed then and remain standing in tribute to the historical significance of the area, said Lee Nixon, carpenter foreman for A.G. Gaston Construction Co. "We had one of the WPA workers come by here and he was worried that we were going to tear his wall down,” Nixon said. ‘He said he built it during WPA days. We told him we were going to leave it up.”’ — From "Recovering Addicts Help Renovate Former Hangout," The Birmingham News (April 20, 1994)