March 30, 2021 - 7:00am
Highly recommended: an eye-opening, heart-breaking tweet thread from Create Streets entitled ‘the world we’ve lost’. It is dedicated to the landmark buildings that were destroyed during the 20th century — some of them by the Luftwaffe or by city planners or by a combination of the two.
The world we have lost.
The C17th “Dutch House” stood on the corner of Bristol’s High Street & Broad St. Saved by the Lord Mayor from traffic engineers in 1900, it was badly damaged but not destroyed by bombs on 24 Nov 1940. It was needlessly demolished 3 days later. pic.twitter.com/givnL8CVtp
— createstreets (@createstreets) March 27, 2021
Examples include the Dutch House in Bristol; Albion Congregational Church in Hull; Bedford Circus in Exeter; and the first Birmingham Central Library.
But is there any point in looking backwards? It’s a question that the authors of the thread ask themselves:
Think what an asset these lost buildings would have been in the 21st century. If they’d survived, they’d be all over the glossy marketing material promoting their respective cities — becoming anchor points for tourism and regeneration. Certainly, they’d be protected by law and, most likely, they’d have been repaired, restored and scraped-clean of decades of soot.
In terms of economic development and human well-being, they’d have repaid the money invested in them many times over. As it is, their destruction didn’t just rob us of the past, but also the better future that might have been.
In any case, there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia. For a start it might prod us to rebuild what we destroyed. As Ed West argues here that’s something that cities like Warsaw have done successfully.
Of course, that’s not always possible — not if the site is occupied and the money lacking. But there is something that we can always do and that is to remember. Just as we put up blue plaques on the houses where great people once lived, we should do the same wherever great buildings once stood.
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SubscribeKhan’s architectural advisor in London recently declared Georgian architecture oppressive and triggering to BAME people. You will need a great many blue plaques pretty soon, the bulldozers are going to be rolling in.
At the same time Oxford University announced sheet music and musical notation were also oppressive and triggering to BAME people. Everything Roger Scruton held dear must be destroyed in the name of anti racism.
The patronising racists who believe BAME people to be feeble minded morons are in the ascendant, even here where comments are being deleted in order to comply with the Govts. new authoritarian position on ‘online hate.’
How about some blue plaques to mark where our comments once were and a brief description of them, so people can see what they’re missing?
I never realised I was a racist until my comments on here started disappearing. I must self flagellate and get myself on an awareness course as soon as I care enough to be half bothered.
Fortunately I am beyond salvation.
yea, but that does not mean you cannot be canceled. I happen to believe almost all the best things in this world came from Westerners, Science, Industry, Medecin, Arts, Literature, Theater, Mathematics, fashion, music, agriculture, Philosophy, Politics, Democracy, Education, popular education, libraries, welfare, sufferege, end of slavery, freedom, environmentalism, Charity, and on and on. I do not think anyone else can compare on any level, not even close. Just look at all the Nobel Prizes, excepting some given for political reasons. Look at amount of books published by nation,, look at about anything.
And what is astounding is some would say my statement is racist! But it is not, it just is.
I never knew I was a racist until someone pointed out my house had sash windows
Tut, tut!
Someone should really get the great Elgar- and Beethoven-loving cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason to comment on the Oxford University thing (although I wonder how long it will be before his entire family of gifted classical musicians are declared traitors to the BAME cause).
I can’t bring myself to look at that hefty volume ‘Lost London’. So many beautiful buildings needlessly destroyed.
I wouldn’t mind quite so much if the replacement weren’t so hideous and depressing.
The wretched Bank of England being one of the most heinous offenders
The destruction of Euston Arch seems to be the worst as it was such a large gateway. Interested parties-councillors , builders , architects etc all make money from knocking down characterful buildings and putting up some hideous concrete monstrosity that is out of character with the other buildings. Roy Strong did a famous 1960’s V & A exhibition about the British country house ( many destroyed because of death duties) and there were lots of campaigns to save various areas. However private owners are now allowed to dig underneath listed houses ( so that they truly are listing ) and gut and pull them to bits.
Might be more relevant to celebrate the ones that survive but need to be better known. Anyone on here familiar with the Piece Hall in Halifax (that’s Yorkshire, not Nova Scotia). Check it out. It survived demoliton in the 1960s on the Mayor’s casting vote, lived a twilight life (store, wholesale market)for decades thereafter and is now restored and repurposed brilliantly.
Yes a splendid building which along with HuddersfIeld Railway Station is well worth the effort of a mini odyssey to see them both.
May I also put in a plea for Beverley Minister, just to the north of Kingston upon Hull?
An absolute gem of medieval craftsmanship that only needs the completion of its central tower to achieve perfection itself.
Forget about plaques. What we need to do is discard the pernicious nonsense that modernism is timeless and eternal but earlier styles are absolutely frozen in time and must never be utilized again.
Brutalism has always been my favorite, not all that fluffing about like Victorian, or Big Facades like Georgian, or fancy Edwardian junk – just a frank look saying, ‘Abandon all Hope you poor people who get to live here cheaply’. I do hope the blue plaques get put where ever those practical, and grim, buildings once stood.
I lived on the 7th floor of one of these , with a baby. The lifts rarely worked and after me and baby got stuck in one for 2 hours I prefered to drag the pushchair up/down 14 flights of stairsThe place attracted gangs who kicked in people’s doors or hit chains against them and threw property over the walls to try to destroy people’s cars. The architects had put the outer-facing wall on the wrong way so the entire wall was covered with mould so we could only use one room. The under-floor heating didn’t work so people used paraffin heater or like us just froze. Other than that it was lovely and I could never understand why the council decided to demolish them
Below is an extract from the Wiki entry on the Dutch House clearly showing it was not ‘needlessly’ demolished. I entirely agree that there has been far too many excellent buildings demolished, usually by the greed of the developer but it doesn’t help the cause for Create Streets to ‘tweak’ the truth with the case of the Dutch House.
‘On Sunday, 24 November 1940 the Dutch House was almost completely consumed by the fire from incendiary bombs which fell in the 5-hour air raid of over 135 German bombers, part of the Bristol Blitz which destroyed much of Bristol’s pre-war shopping area. A photograph taken immediately after the raid [7] shows that only 4 of the 5 storeys of the High Street facade and a small section of the Wine Street return remained, the inside having been completely burnt away and the tottering facade only held up by the inner steel skeleton (badly twisted in the fire) which had been inserted in 1908 as part of the rebuild.[8] Three days later on 27 November 1940 an army demolition team pulled the remains down by cables attached to a lorry to make the corner safe. According to an eye-witness account,[9] the demolition took considerable effort, which is understandable, as the steel frame was connected to the boundary walls of Jones and Company department store on either side in multiple places.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dutch_House,_Bristol
Bridgend town hall (S. Wales) in Victorian times, versus the dingy carbuncle that sits on the same spot now, and the dingy carbuncle that became the new government building across the river. Sickening.
What a pointless exercise.
Of the approximately 55 *Great Medieval Churches that existed in 1535 , a mere 22 survive today. Besides a memorial to our artistic barbarism what purpose would any commemorative memorial serve?
We “murder buildings “, we know that, move on.
* All are either Cathedrals ( both Secular & Monastic, Abbeys, Priories, and Collegiate Churches, of about 29,000 sq ft in plan and 300 ft or more in length.
(For Europhiles that is 2694 sq m, & 91.4 m.)
What sort of a philistine would discuss classic British buildings in Meters? That would be like giving the Doomsday Book reprint in Euros.
The wound of Brexit has yet to heal!