Eventhough they represented only less than 1% of the total population of the state of Alabama (2.160), the Italians of the Birmingham District thus prospered and gained a relevant role within the social fabric of Magic City, now commonly called, after the exponential growth of its steel industry, as the Pittsburgh of the South.
A notable Italian arrived in Birmingham from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1923. Italian sculptor Giuseppe Moretti (1857-1935) had moved to the industrial hub of the Northeast in 1895 and resided there for almost thirty years.
Moretti’s passion for marble, his favorite medium, began at age 9 in Siena and remained lifelong. Looking for an American substitute for the Carrara marble he had imported at the beginning of his career in the US, Moretti visited the marble quarries around Sylacauga, Alabama, and, upon seeing the marble outcroppings of Talladega County, he immediately sought backing to purchase the land. Over a periodof 20 years, Moretti invested in at least 10 marble companies to quarry and promote Alabama marble. The Talladega Marble Company, Moretti’s first venture capital marble business, founded in 1905, was perhaps his most elaborate marble complex.
