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JFK Kennedy Memorial Mosaic

Enjoyed it, along with many other commuters, in the very same way when it was at the bottom of Snow Hill. Glad the faces of JF Kennedy and Martin Luther King are the original pieces too. Viv.
 
St Chads is so different now. What with the old JFK Tower / Snow Hill Plaza converted into a Holiday Inn Express.

Also there are two new office buildings 1 and 2 Snowhill down Snow Hill Queensway.

The view is ruined by the incompleted cores left over from the recession of 2008 (they are still there today - not sure if they will be removed or the building recomenced on that site).



My bus just went around from the Great Charles Street Queensway, and right onto Snow Hill Queensway.

This view is out-of-date but it is similar to this now

 
In Ell's second photo, the box shaped building in front of the Metrobus is/was something to do with nuclear war services, I think telephone or electricity provision in the event of a nuclear war. Viv.
 
That was a year before the Metrobuses were completely taken off the bus network in the West Midlands!

Another view of them - St Chad's Cathedral

 
This is what St Chad's looks like now - without the JFK memorial and raised to street level. Basically a grassy square in front of St Chad's Cathedral.



It would have been in front of what was the JFK tower - now being converted into a Holiday Inn Express

 
Bird's eye view of St Chad's Circus from 2 Snowhill - this was where the old JFK Memorial and the train mosaic were until over a decade ago

 
Better than having a sunken square around raised roadways! Not sure what they were thinking of in the '60s. Re: Mazzoni.

 
Yes, Birmingham did have a subway and ring road fetish! You couldn't go very far around town in the 1960s without using a subway/underpass. Not only would you be taking your life into your own hands trying to cross some of the new roads, it was generally the quickest route. That's what comes of being a major car producing city I suppose, too many cars, too little space. Viv.
 
Birmingham Council obviously thought underpasses /subways were a great idea at the time they were built. Going through them was very frightening
at times. I remember visiting our solicitors with my brother on Paradise Street some years ago when a man charged out of the underpass and went for the
attache case my brother was carrying. He didn't get it after a wrangle. He then disappeared back into the subway. We were both shocked.
 
The subways always got vandalised. Even the ones that still exist get tagged. Also drug and anti-social issues. No wonder the council decided to demolished them and fill them in!

It's the Queensway tunnels that are next for renovation this coming summer!
 
Just wondering how many people remember where they were 50 years ago tonight when JFK was assassinated. It is reckoned everyone that was alive can remember.
I was 15 and my parents and sister had gone to a dance at the Birmingham Transport (buses) social club In the city centre. I was alone when it came on TV.
 
hi tony
i was in the windmill pub dudley rd with a couple of dear olf frieds oppersite the very hospital i was born in;
when the news started to shout around about the slaying of old kennardy and we walked down dudley d spreadin the new
then went into the colledge best wises astonian;
 
My late wife and I were dining in a small bistro [that word seems to have gone out of fashion] in Bournemouth, with my late bandleader and his vocalist wife when it came up on a small TV. My, 50 years, it doesn't seem that long ago, but when you use the word "late" twice in the same sentence to refer to people, then you know it must have been!

Maurice
 
I was 11 years old, just started senior school, my favourite Aunt Joan was visiting when the news came on TV. She was mid twenties, became hysterical and prophesised the start of WW111. Thank goodness she was wrong, for once. Anne
 
I was standing at a bus stop in Aldershot, waiting to catch a bus to PIRBRIGHT, a lady coming along was crying, and said that Pres Kennedy had been murdered, and that the Russians had done it over Cuba, and we would have a atomic war. I was only a 16+ Jnr and hoped that it wasn't true, I think everyone was very depressed.Paul
 
I was 15 years of age. Travelling on a Midland Red B87 bus going up Dudley road, listening to my recent birthday pressie. A transistor radio.
 
I was too young to remember the event but i heard a very good interview on the radio this morning and they were talking to the Neurosurgeon that tried to save him.
He stated that the first shot went through his trachea but he could have survived this wound. He said Kennedy was wearing a back brace (he had a bad back) that held him upright and kept him in position, if he hadn't have been wearing this the first shot would have thrown him making the second fatal shot very difficult.
The conspiracy theories abound saying there were two shooters but this Doctor broke his silence years later highlighting the fact surrounding the back brace and how it held him in position and a single shooter was possible due to these circumstances, very interesting. Here is part of the interview..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25052558
 
Hi,

By coincidence, I was listening to the commentary from one of the Voice of America's short wave transmitters,
and I heard the shots 'live'. It wasn't newsflashed on the BBC from recollection for about three quarters of an hour.

Kind regards

Dave
 
It was the third month of my Canadian adventure. I was on my lunch hour at work when the news came
through. It was hard to believe. The American news stations were totally alive with the awful news.
I lived in the YWCA in Peterborough,Ontario at the time and a couple of the girls who lived there also asked me to go
to their Aunts house North of Toronto for the weekend. On Sunday morning, 24th November, we visited some friends
and walked into their house just in time to witness Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV.
 
brumgum said:
I was too young to remember the event but i heard a very good interview on the radio this morning and they were talking to the Neurosurgeon that tried to save him.
Click to expand...

Seeing as how his head "explodes" when the bullet hits him I would have though he would have died instantly, and certainly by the time he got to hospital.

My guess the delay in announcing his death was so the Americans could make sure all the "behind the scenes" thing were sorted out, such as getting Johnson quickly sworn in as president, and to check that this was not the prelude to some sort of uprising or Russian invasion.
 
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