1931 Art Deco Medical Arts Building turned boutique hotel — guests still report a nurse in white on the eighth floor and a self-summoning elevator above the former morgue.
1023 20th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35205
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Operates as a Hotel Indigo (IHG) boutique hotel; nightly room rates apply.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Eight-story urban hotel with elevators; Five Points South sidewalk access.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1931 · 1931 Art Deco landmark · Original Birmingham Medical Arts Building · Adjacent to historic Pickwick Club · Adaptive reuse case study (medical offices to hotel)
The Medical Arts Building was designed by Birmingham architects Roy J. Wyatt and Henry C. Bortz and completed in 1931 at the prominent Five Points South intersection. The Art Deco design — eight stories of brick and terra cotta with stylized geometric ornamentation — was developed by the Kamram Grotto Masonic order along with the adjacent Pickwick Club, an Art Deco nightclub and clubhouse.
Throughout the middle decades of the 20th century the building functioned as a working medical office tower. Upper floors housed doctors' and dentists' practices; the eighth floor included surgical suites; and the basement contained a morgue. The Pickwick Club, which directly adjoined the Medical Arts Building, became a Birmingham social fixture and is the namesake of the building's subsequent hotel iteration.
The building's conversion to a hotel began in 1986 and was completed in 1988, when it opened as the Pickwick Hotel and Conference Center alongside an adjacent Pickwick Plaza retail development. The hotel was subsequently rebranded as Hotel Highland. In 2018 a substantial renovation reopened the property as the Hotel Indigo Birmingham Five Points South, an IHG boutique-hotel-brand operation that preserves the building's Art Deco facade and lobby while updating guest rooms.
The building sits at the heart of Five Points South, Birmingham's historic Southside entertainment and dining district. It is documented in Bhamwiki's Medical Arts Building entry and remains one of the principal Art Deco landmarks in the city.
Sources
The Hotel Indigo's haunting reputation began during the building's 1986-88 conversion to the Pickwick Hotel. According to multiple regional sources (Haunted Places, FrightFind, Haunted Rooms America, US Ghost Adventures) and the Bhamwiki Hotel Indigo entry, construction workers were the first to report unexplained activity on the eighth floor — the floor that during the building's medical era had housed surgical suites.
The most-cited apparition is a female nurse in white still 'making rounds' on the eighth floor. A former director of sales is quoted in regional press as having said the eighth-floor elevator is repeatedly called by no one — the call light lit and the car ascending to the eighth floor with no rider waiting and no guest visible when the doors open.
Cold spots are reported in the basement area, which during the medical era housed the building's morgue. Tour materials note that the current fitness center is located in the former morgue space.
A separate report describes a young girl heard laughing, playing jacks, and bouncing a ball in the main-floor lobby after hours. No specific name or historical anchor for the child has been documented; the report is consistent across the sources cited above but is not tied to a specific death record.
Disembodied voices reportedly telling guests to leave have been reported in scattered guest accounts. The activity is framed in the lore as anchored to the building's medical history rather than to any specific named patient or staff member.
Notable Entities
Stay overnight in the former Medical Arts Building. The eighth floor is the most-cited area for the 'nurse in white' apparition; the basement (former morgue) is the site of cold-spot reports.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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