2nd Avenue Storage

Walk to Your Storage Unit

Located in Birmingham, AL, 2nd Avenue Storage is the Loft District's source for all your storage and secure parking needs.
Please make an appointment to come see us next door to El Barrio.

Customer Testimonials

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"This has been incredibly convenient for us over these past 4 years."

- Marc G., 2nd Avenue Storage Customer

"Great storage area… We were very satisfied with the storage unit over the several years we rented it.”

-Roy R., 2nd Avenue Storage Customer

Filtering by Tag: artifacts

I've Made a Horrible Mistake

When I found this, I posted that it was the old Standard Furniture sign. With some help from Standard's current owner, I realize now that I read the property records wrongly and that I was actually reading adjacent properties. After a touch of embarrassment, going back to the records I see that there were actually 2 furniture companies recorded: Kliner Furniture Co. (1937) and A.P. Furniture (1938-1957). Sooooo, what did the other half of this sign say? I don't know. I guess I'll have to drag myself over to the library and dig into the city archives for pictures. I've been meaning to do that anyway, but its cold and wet, and frankly I don't want to go. Furniture Co. Sign

 

Space 111's Impromptu Art Installation

Wednesday I went to the weekly figure drawing class over at Space 111.  Afterwards I invited everyone over to Storkland/Counts Bros. to see all the weird odds and ends and give me advice about making some art out of it that I could display in my new loft.  I showed them the display I put up in the window with all the weird old stuff I found.  

Interesting old items I found in the Counts Bros. building

 

I used a couple of the old ladders and put up the Standard furniture sign, the ink bottle, an adding machine (the only one I could lift), the thread box and various spools, and other odds and ends.

 

Rachael, Jonathan, and Margaux go to town on a new display

 

They asked if they could make their own display, and I said "heck yeah!"  In a whirlwind of activity they put together a better display in 15 minutes than the one that had taken me days.

They used items which I had previously found less interesting: mason jars, mirrors, glass medicine bottles, glassware, balls of string.

My pictures don't do it justice, so if you're in the area walk by and take a look for yourself.

 

Space 111's impromptu art installation

 

Treasure in the Coal Chute

Steve from What's on 2nd visited me on Sunday and we dug around looking for treasures. There's a coal chute next to the old freight elevator, and we found some cool items. We found an old ink bottle for refilling the ink wells used for fountain pens around the turn of the century.

Fountain Pen Ink Bottle

When the building was first built it was the Counts Brothers sewing machine company. I haven't found many items from that time, but there was an old sewing machine in the chute.

Counts Bros Sewing Machine

20 years later the building housed Standard Furniture Co. Buried under the coal and debris was half of the Standard Furniture sign. I'm hoping  to be able to find the other half.

Standard Furniture Sign

We also found some license plates from 1946. I wonder if I can find out to whom it belonged.

1946 License Plates

Finally we found an old piece of wood with an interesting brand: Wabash Stove Boards. Steve wasn't familiar with it, but heating stoves were not used much past the 1910s so this is around 100 years old.

Wabash Stove Boards