What about our historic buildings?

[John Woj]

Fed up with seeing our historic and beautiful old buildings in the city centre of Manchester dissapear, for the sake of tens of copycat cheap looking apartment buildings? Or do think it's a fab idea? Tell us what you think, good or bad, vent your anger here! But keep language clean please.

[JustThinkPhil]

I have no objection to encouraging City Living: However there must be a ballance of usage of the buildings in a City Centre. A vibrant City requires diverse amenities. Over populating any City Centre with living dwellings can lead to loss of "purpose" and change the City Centre into a suburb, causing a drop in pace that could cause a trend for thrill seekers to go out of the City Centre to find more excitement.

I would have thought "alternative" tourist attracting uses for established "old" buildings would need to be prioritised, as "new build" would more effectivelly meet a supply/demand market for city dwellings.

I think "new Buildings" need not replace old. A process of complimenting what is there should always be considered.

[RKitch]

I think alot of the new build in Manchester is terrible. A lot of the appartments look dreadful & shoddy . I suspect that they are just slums for rich people but hopefully the worse developers will have been credit crunched. I also hate the way a lot of open space has been built on in the city centre- esp around the university. A lot of the developement is driven by a kind of gold rush mentality & not by perception of need- look at the Corn Exchange, now the Triangle- it used to have a lot of independant traders doing a good business now its a yuppie desert.I don't think I've seen more than 3 people in the place when I been in there: I hope they don't see off Afflecks Palace. It's the loss of character more than anything- Manchester being supplanted by Yuppieville!

[RKitch]

Plus the loss of our heritage- I thinking of the Aaben Cinema in Hulme that John used to run. It was demolished to make way for flats.

[John Woj]

I couldn't agree more - it's the indy places we must protect - but for some years now they have been a - falling down around us!

[John Woj]

Originally Posted by RKitch

I think alot of the new build in Manchester is terrible.

Now, here I give you a perfect example of bad development. On Great Ancoats Street there once lived a Art Deco 'type' furniture store (I mean the building and not the furniture). It was empty for some years and appropriately along with the rest of Ancoats. pulled down to make way for goldrush developers who came up with the concept of yet another Manchester quarter - the Italian Quarter (from the former Little Italy). Admittably the building was a shambles but what has been built is worse. A orange and grey looking Flat Pack apartment block which has been so shambolickly built by cheap-skate developers out to make a quick buck - and approved by a city Council so equally short sighted in a rush to get people to live in the city centre (let alone they don't see a need to increase essential resources in the city to cope with all these new city centre dwellers (but that's another matter!) - that the building has been ordered to be pulled down!

The story being, that the Polish contracters brought in to build the building, cut so many corners and used cheap steal that doesn't meet the standards of building regs! The company has of course now gone bust, so some other contracter will be brought in to rebuild it!!!

I dread to think of how many more buildings have been constructed from cheap steel - and I am sure there are many in the cheap brigade of copycat apartment blocks!

[jon kino]

Several years ago planning permission was granted to demolish the Odeon Cinema on Oxford Road and replace with a state of the art (aweful looking ofice block. I wonder if this idea will still go ahead due to the credit crunch? It's still stood there though I guess that they are waiting for adjoining buildings to be emptied as I think they are all part and parcel of the same development.

The developer employed some workers to destroy the interior building and elements of anything of architectural significance so that the building could never be restored.

On the subject of historical cinema buildings, and to demonstrate it happens not only in Manchester. Last year, Derby Hippodrome which 'was' a fine building until greedy developers vandalised the building by tearing down the side wall making the roof fall in and left to the elements. All in the name of doing some remedial work - ordered by the town council to a listed building. The developer got away with it and the building is now rotting away with no chance of surviving the winter season.

Here is the full story of that disaster http://www.derbygripe.co.uk/hippo.htm
and here are latest photographs by urban explorers group at: http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/...ad.php?t=34964

Leave your comments here if you are outraged by this act of state sponsored vandalism to a Listed Building.

Sign this petition in the campaign to save the Derby Hippodrome
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/derbyhippodrome/

The land has been ear-marked for another much-needed (cough) skyscraper. But campaigners say this will have a negative impact on the gay village. I would question whether anything can possibly ’spoil’ the gay village.

The car-park used to be the site of this rather impressive building (this picture is from 1973). Here’s another photo and one here that shows huge windows at the side on every floor. Here’s one more photo from 1972 and I can’t resist linking to this shot, which shows a veritable horse-drawn traffic-jam at the same junction in 1914 and seems to have been snapped from the building itself.

As as is so often the case in Manchester, the ideal thing would have been if this buiding had never been demolished in the first place. It seems that happened soon after these images were made in the seventies and the corner has been an unloved wasteland ever since.

Buildings that are far more historic and significant than this one continue to disappear in Manchester every year. The grade-two-listed Empress Cinema on Oldham Road burnt down last year. The Odeon cinema on Oxford Street in the city centre is probably going to go.

At the end of 2005, the former Welsh Baptist Chapel on Upper Brook Street had its roof removed and is now a ruin that is open to the elements. It was designed by Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, and its owners had allowed this beautiful building to fall into a dangerous state. Who are the owners? Why, our friends at Manchester City Council… English Heritage doesn’t seem to have been able to do anything so far.