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Birmingham museum and art gallery.

Scaffolding near the Great Charles Street Queensway corner with Congreve Passage. Where that concrete bridge was demolished a few years ago.



This view of the same spot from February 2018.



The bridge before demolition in 2016.

 
Went to the University College Birmingham on Wednesday evening (previously College of Food / Tourism and various other incarnations) and would dearly have loved to have cut down by the front of the Museum and Art Gallery and straight down Pinfold Street to get to the station. We had to add the loop of Margaret Street and Colmore Row and cut it very fine for the train.
 
i fear disruptions such as that will continue for many years to come pen and i will only venture into the city centre now if i really have to....dont know it anymore...glad you just managed to catch your train

lyn
 
Assume you used New Street if not Snow Hill. There is new pavements around the UCB. From Great Charles Street Queensway, you could head down Newhall Street and Bennetts Hill and go through the Burlington Arcade. If you want to avoid Pinfold Street in future.
 
We went that way Ell but it seemed slightly longer. I will investigate though, thanks. At least there is a crossing at the top of Summer Row now.
 
One of the crossings on Parardise Circus is closed so you have to cross over towards Summer Row and UCB, then back over to BM & AG. Today I went down Margaret Street, what was Edmund Street, Victoria Square, Pinfold Street and into New Street Station / Grand Central / Bullring to get to Moor Street.



Scaffolding update on BM & AG.

 
Had a flick through the posts , nobody has mentioned the boar that Prince Philip dispatched . It was in a glass cabinet in a sort of sitting position with the barb or spear shafts still visible sticking out of the boars shoulder. It was killed in the 1950's
I always looked at that when I made my way around as a nipper
 
Current museum view from Centenary Way (where Paradise Forum used to be)



Until four years ago was like this!

 
Scaffolding coming down on the corner of Great Charles Street Queensway / Congreve Passage where the concrete bridge was once attached.

 
Pedestrian diversion to the Chamberlain Square entrance, late July to late October 2019. Starting from Victoria Square, head up Eden Place.



Then turn left onto Edmund Street towards Chamberlain Square, and take another left to the museum entrance.



Or turn right to Centenary Square via Centenary Way if you don't want to go to the museum.
 
ellbrown said:
Scaffolding near the Great Charles Street Queensway corner with Congreve Passage. Where that concrete bridge was demolished a few years ago.



This view of the same spot from February 2018.




Was

The bridge before demolition in 2016.

Click to expand...
Was the old bridge used by council house staff only or could the general public use it when going from museum to library. Often wondered if it was used.
 
thanks for the heads up ell..no wonder i now avoid the city centre unless i really have to go there :rolleyes:

lyn
 
Don't do what I did and walk via the Mailbox, Gas Street Basin and Centenary Square just to get back to Victoria Square! Too many pedestrian diversions due to all the building work. I've been thinking of booking that Home of Metal Black Sabbath exhibition but they are charging £13.57 (that includes £1.57 fees). https://homeofmetal.com/tickets

Although not really a metal or Black Sabbath fan.
 
john knight said:
Birmingham now is one dreary, unwelcoming area, full of cranes building office blocks, (how many more do we need), and student flats,only original area left now is Digbeth/Deritend, but not for much longer I'm afraid.
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I have said many times on these forums that when I moved to Birmingham in about 1980 the city was dying.

Many of the traditional industries were closing and factories were being abandoned. The canals had been abandoned and the areas alongside them were mostly a dump. We had the Handsworth riots and the British Leyland strikes. Many people in other parts of the country thought of Birmingham as a "joke" city (I know that because that is what people in London where I lived thought of Birmingham). It still has NOT fully shaken off that negative image.

But every major city needs income to pay for all the services the city provides.

At the moment it seems to me that Birmingham Council is pretty much broke and cannot afford to do many of the things it would like to do.

The only way to change that is to build more office blocks and encourage companies to relocate here, and for people to come and live and work here.

These companies will pay various taxes to have their offices in the city, and the people who work in them pay council tax on their homes in the city, and use local facilities like shops and pubs and restaurants to keep the economy active.

Without these new developments (be they office blocks, apartments, shopping centres, updating New Street station or laying down tram tracks) they city would just be living in the past and slowly dying.

A few months ago HSBC bank moved their UK headquarters, and many of their London staff, from London to new offices on Broad St (opposite the new library).

They would not have done that if they had not felt the city was being improved and moderized. It would be very hard for them to encourage their staff to move from London if the city was still like it was from the 1980s (most of my workmates said I was mad when I said I was moving from London to Birmingham in 1980).

You can "praise" Digbeth / Deritend all you like, but most of the area is a dump. I walk round Birmingham a lot taking photographs and one of the most unpleasant parts of Birmingham to walk round is Digbeth / Deritend.

Many old abandoned factories, lots of scruffy surface car parks (where you park on dirt), horrible car repair garages under the railway arches, everywhere cars parked on pavements, rubbish everywhere (the council rarely send in cleaners), cracked paving slabs and so on. It is a horrible area.

The area will improve when (if) HS2 is built, as some of these abandoned factories are done up, and hopefully the council start to take more care of the area. It will also improve when the old Wholesale Market site is developed.

Have a look at the cities that are growing all over the world, they have office blocks and skyscrapers everywhere. You MUST bring new business to a city, if not it dies.

If you don't improve a city then all the people with skill and talent go and live in another city, or even country, and that leaves Birmingham as a city that will just slowly die.

Every city develops and grows because of what it produces or provides (Sheffield and steel, Liverpool and their port, Manchester and their cotton/linen trade and so on). Birmingham had the canals, and their "thousand trades" but they have long gone so it must either reinvent itself or die as a city.

Other cities like Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool etc are having to reinvent themselves as their "core" business went away, Birmingham must also do the same or it will fall behind these other cities. In fact I think Birmingham is already falling behind Manchester as the "second city". They have many new office blocks and other modern buildings, they have the "Media City" area and the BBC reporting from their every day, they have two major world famous Premier League football clubs and so on.

So for Birmingham to keep up all these new developments in the city are vital for the future of the city.
 
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guilbert53 said:
I have said many times on these forums that when I moved to Birmingham in about 1980 the city was dying.

Many of the traditional industries were closing and factories were being abandoned. The canals had been abandoned and the areas alongside them were mostly a dump. We had the Handsworth riots and the British Leyland strikes. Many people in other parts of the country thought of Birmingham as a "joke" city (I know that because that is what people in London where I lived thought of Birmingham). It still has NOT fully shaken off that negative image.

But every major city needs income to pay for all the services the city provides.

At the moment it seems to me that Birmingham Council is pretty much broke and cannot afford to do many of the things it would like to do.

The only way to change that is to build more office blocks and encourage companies to relocate here, and for people to come and live and work here.

These companies will pay various taxes to have their offices in the city, and the people who work in them pay council tax on their homes in the city, and use local facilities like shops and pubs and restaurants to keep the economy active.

Without these new developments (be they office blocks, apartments, shopping centres, updating New Street station or laying down tram tracks) they city would just be living in the past and slowly dying.

A few months ago HSBC bank moved their UK headquarters, and many of their London staff, from London to new offices on Broad St (opposite the new library).

They would not have done that if they had not felt the city was being improved and moderized. It would be very hard for them to encourage their staff to move from London if the city was still like it was from the 1980s (most of my workmates said I was mad when I said I was moving from London to Birmingham in 1980).

You can "praise" Digbeth / Deritend all you like, but most of the area is a dump. I walk round Birmingham a lot taking photographs and one of the most unpleasant parts of Birmingham to walk round is Digbeth / Deritend.

Many old abandoned factories, lots of scruffy surface car parks (where you park on dirt), horrible car repair garages under the railway arches, everywhere cars parked on pavements, rubbish everywhere (the council rarely send in cleaners), cracked paving slabs and so on. It is a horrible area.

The area will improve when (if) HS2 is built, as some of these abandoned factories are done up, and hopefully the council start to take more care of the area. It will also improve when the old Wholesale Market site is developed.

Have a look at the cities that are growing all over the world, they have office blocks and skyscrapers everywhere. You MUST bring new business to a city, if not it dies.

If you don't improve a city then all the people with skill and talent go and live in another city, or even country, and that leaves Birmingham as a city that will just slowly die.

Every city develops and grows because of what it produces or provides (Sheffield and steel, Liverpool and their port, Manchester and their cotton/linen trade and so on). Birmingham had the canals, and their "thousand trades" but they have long gone so it must either reinvent itself or die as a city.

Other cities like Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool etc are having to reinvent themselves as their "core" business went away, Birmingham must also do the same or it will fall behind these other cities. In fact I think Birmingham is already falling behind Manchester as the "second city". They have many new office blocks and other modern buildings, they have the "Media City" area and the BBC reporting from their every day, they have two major world famous Premier League football clubs and so on.

So for Birmingham to keep up all these new developments in the city are vital for the future of the city.
Click to expand...
I totally agree with you. What any business needs (and Birmingham city council is a business) is 'footfall' over it's threshold. Any community needs people to: buy petrol, rent hotel rooms, visit theatres, buy food, visit restaurants, use taxis, trams and buses etc, etc. Without people who have disposable income walking our streets, the city is dead. Bring in more people I say. Birmingham is not a village or a town, it is a major city that has to be fed copious amounts of 'stuff' every hour of every day for it to survive.
 
I disagree with the previous 2 comments. I have travelled the world in my 89 years and other cities seem to seem to retain their historical buildings and still survive, I'm talking about Rome, Paris Brussels etc... Birmingham to me has lost its individuality and soul, I will never go there again, it now just like any other city. What London thinks is no criterion, they have no time for any place north of Watford and never have. Rant over. Eric
 
cookie273uk said:
I disagree with the previous 2 comments. I have travelled the world in my 89 years and other cities seem to seem to retain their historical buildings and still survive, I'm talking about Rome, Paris Brussels etc... Birmingham to me has lost its individuality and soul, I will never go there again, it now just like any other city. What London thinks is no criterion, they have no time for any place north of Watford and never have. Rant over. Eric
Click to expand...
Where were the buildings in Birmingham that compared with Rome, Paris or Brussels that have now disappeared?
 
the Market Hall for one, the original library and the adjoining college for another. Centenary square should have been left as it was with the colonnades, lawns trees etc... one of the few open spaces we had in the city. The Bull ring should have been left alone that certainly was unique. All these office blocks they are building, have they considered how the staff are going to commute ? it is already gridlocked at certain times of day, the roads simply cannot cope. There is one thing I approve of, cleaning the canals, I notice this having spent 40 years painting them. I know people will disagree with me, particularly the young but we all have our point of view and this is mine. Eric
 
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and a view i certainly agree with eric add to your list the wonderful woodman pub that was on easy row...just to name a few lost buildings....bob there are photographs of all these buildings on the forum under their various threads

lyn
 
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