Now this is the Manchester of my youth.
I say youth but I was just turning 19 and many of the old Victorian and Edwardian buildings were still around.
They were soot covered and some had become very neglected but they oozed confidence and they were Manchester.
Of course Mr Hitler and Derek the Developer had done for many of them but there were still enough left to impress me when I walked the city streets in between lectures in the late 1960s and early ‘70.
It would be easy and a little cheap to mourn the passing of many of them which I suspect had been uncomfortable places to work when they were built.
And those modern developments do express that same mix of assertive self confidence and commercial drive.
This one on the corner of Princess Street and Mosley Street fascinates me.
I can’t now remember if it was still standing when I arrived and the site would later become the Peace Gardens before becoming the new home for the Cenotaph.
It was there by the late 19th century offering office space upstairs while the downstairs was occupied Alexander Thomson who were stationers, R.S Bayley who traded in cigars and on the corner Mr Sinclair who was a tobacconist in 1911.
Not much had changed by 1968 when our image was taken. There was still the same range of small shops, and the one that caught my eye which was the “Wallpaper Shop”.
I doubt that such a shop would have much of a future in the city centre today.
And this last comment I have had to modify given the comment below from a someone who points out that there is a very impressive store on Deansgate.
The picture come to light through a new project which Neil Simpson tells me is “the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, which currently is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed is in the process of taking the 200,000 negatives in the collection dating from 1956 to 2007 and digitising them.
The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online - initially on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website".
And that only leaves me o include one I tool earlier from the Art Gallery looking out almost on the same spot.
Now what ever I have already said about liking grimy Victorian and Edwardian buildings I have to say that what they have done on the corner of Princess Street and Mosley Street is just so much better, affording a fine view of the entrance to the Town Hall.
But that last comment will no doubt be challenged.
We shall see.
Location Manchester
Picture; of Princess Street, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and looking at almost the same spot in 2015 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*Neil Simpson, Manchester Local Images Collection Website, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/sets/7215766350511542
They were soot covered and some had become very neglected but they oozed confidence and they were Manchester.
Of course Mr Hitler and Derek the Developer had done for many of them but there were still enough left to impress me when I walked the city streets in between lectures in the late 1960s and early ‘70.
It would be easy and a little cheap to mourn the passing of many of them which I suspect had been uncomfortable places to work when they were built.
This one on the corner of Princess Street and Mosley Street fascinates me.
I can’t now remember if it was still standing when I arrived and the site would later become the Peace Gardens before becoming the new home for the Cenotaph.
It was there by the late 19th century offering office space upstairs while the downstairs was occupied Alexander Thomson who were stationers, R.S Bayley who traded in cigars and on the corner Mr Sinclair who was a tobacconist in 1911.
Not much had changed by 1968 when our image was taken. There was still the same range of small shops, and the one that caught my eye which was the “Wallpaper Shop”.
And this last comment I have had to modify given the comment below from a someone who points out that there is a very impressive store on Deansgate.
The picture come to light through a new project which Neil Simpson tells me is “the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, which currently is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed is in the process of taking the 200,000 negatives in the collection dating from 1956 to 2007 and digitising them.
The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online - initially on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website".
And that only leaves me o include one I tool earlier from the Art Gallery looking out almost on the same spot.
But that last comment will no doubt be challenged.
We shall see.
Location Manchester
Picture; of Princess Street, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and looking at almost the same spot in 2015 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*Neil Simpson, Manchester Local Images Collection Website, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/sets/7215766350511542
