Alabama Public radio is well into season two of the television business program called “Alabama, Inc.” I profile entrepreneurs who call our state home. Today, we’ll meet an architect whose projects range from a symbol of the civil rights movement to the home of the San Antonio Spurs. Jay Pigford is a fan of the Spurs and he makes no bones about it…
“When I go back, I always hope that I get a game, and I get to sometimes” he says. “And, I toyed with the idea of flying down for a game, because it’s just so. To be in that place, see so many wins, it’s always incredible to experience that again.”
That place is the AT & T center in San Antonio, Texas. Most fans buy their tickets, pay dearly for a hot dog and a beer and watch the action. Pigford’s experience is a little different. He’s a Birmingham architect, and he studied at the University of Texas in Austin. That led to an offer that could make any Spurs jealous.
“To work on that was pretty surreal,” he says.
Pigford was on the design team to help remodel the outside of the AT & T center. He says the best part of a construction project is to watch the basic framework go up at the worksite. The home of the Spurs is a little different..
“You know, it’s hard to express how feels,” says Pigford. “You’re very proud of it definitely. But, I don’t point it out too much, because not everybody likes everything you do.”
And Pigford seems to make a habit of taking on emotionally significant projects. He works with his father at Architectureworks in Birmingham. If you thought pleasing basketball fans was tough, Pigford’s first project at the firm dealt with one of the most iconic symbols of Alabama’s civil rights movement. Architectureworks was asked to refurbish the 16th Street Baptist Church, the site of a 1963 bombing that killed four young black girls and helped generate support for the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
“It was a very compelling project,” Pigford recalls. So, compelling that a historian was brought in from Atlanta to examine the structure and decide what Pigford’s team could touch and what they couldn’t. “The building was really falling apart,” says Pigford. “After the bomb blast, not much had been done. They replaced some windows, but there was a lot of water infiltration. It didn’t look bad from the outside, but it was very quickly becoming debilitating for the building.”
One job was digging a moat around the Church to channel away rainwater. Another was prying up the tiles from the steps leading up from the street. Pigford says the historian was keeping a close eye on that part…
“In an early photograph, there’s a funny tree right in the center of the steps, as you come out to the sidewalk,” says Pigford. “We had to put that place.”
Pigford’s father oversaw the 16th Street Baptist Church restoration. Jay says when he was growing up, he was never sure what his dad was doing at his drafting table at home, and he never pushed his son into architecture. After considering other careers, Jay settled into his career designing buildings. He says he’s been at it so long, he can say who designed a certain project by the way it looks…
“And it’s kind of that way even in Birmingham,” Pigford says. “With the number of firms in Birmingham I can tell. They have a very distinct flavor to them.”
There are some kinds of projects Pigford won’t touch. Ask him to design a prison, no dice. But, he is interested in preserving old buildings in Birmingham, and creating new parks. We’ll discuss how Jay Pigford got from here to there on Alabama, Inc., Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on your local Alabama Public Television station.
