Just north of the Pilgrim Street roundabout in Newcastle, where what used to be known as Australia House stands there is now a vacant lot, a piece of barren ground that is hidden behind a large advertising hording. There used to be a building there, an impressive glass and concrete structure that was occupied by the Bank of England’s regional office. It was a modern building, perhaps post-modern and it has been empty for many years waiting for fate to decide its future.
When it was built it represented everything good and bright and positive. It was built as part of the transformation of the city, part of the vision of a new Newcastle, a brave new world, a motor city where cars drove at ground level and people lived in the sky on elevated walkways. It was built at a time when the central motorway scythed its way through the east side of the city just as the east coast mainline to Edinburgh had cut its way through the castle grounds. It was a gateway building inviting the visitor into the city once they had crossed the river by the iconic Tyne Bridge.
This was a new era, a renaissance for Newcastle that would rise from the decline of its heavy industrial past and war time hammering to take its place on the world stage. But it was not to be. The bank building looked sad and unloved. What had once been a sight for sore eyes became nothing more than an eyesore. Concrete is a material that doesn’t wear well and the building was riddled with asbestos and a nightmare to do anything useful with. It became a magnate for the disenfranchised and an emblem of everything that had gone wrong with the vision of sixties urban planning. It stood as a sentinel, a beacon, warning people not to enter into the decay that lay behind, the shops on the east side of Pilgrim street, the dilapidated bus station on Worswick street and the now defunct fire station. The irony cannot be lost that Pilgrim Street runs parallel with one of the finest streets in the country, Grey Street which is nearly four times as old and still alive.
It wasn’t the building that had failed but the vision. It wasn’t a new era but an experiment that didn’t deliver and people don’t want to live in an experiment, they want to live in vibrant living organic cities that ooze character with nooks and crannies and busy winding side streets. What the city really needs is people to move back in its heart and what is needed is not for people to linger longer but for them to live in the city in a way that happens in most European cities.
Now the building has gone and there is an empty space. Come on Newcastle, you have a real opportunity to make amends for those past errors.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 