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Saturday, February 03, 2007
Good News continued
Hebdomadary asks whether they really built the horrific Westgate house next to the Victorian Union Rooms ( currently a Wetherspoons pub). Indeed they did. The first picture gives another view. The next building to the west of the Union building is one of the medieval churches of Newcastle, St John`s, Grainger Street. The second picture of the church gives a glimpse of Westgate house looming in the background
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5 comments:
Congratulations on getting rid of the monstrosity. You should consider yourselves fortunate, though. In America, the vandals would have bulldozed the surrounding buildings for a big open ( paved, of course ) "public space" that no one would have used.
The Union Rooms is a quite recent change of name (when, to give them credit, Weatherspoons saved the building) from the 'Union Club'. It was, some said, the premier gentleman's club in Newcastle. Oddly enough, Pevsner, in his Northumberland volume of The Buildings of England seems to have closed his eyes as he passed it since it is not mentioned at all but almost every other building is. The now happily-extinct Westgate House was actually inspected by myself and other union officials in the 1970s to see if it came up to the standards we required for our members and we passed it! But, it did have decent office accomodation behind its ugly facade.
ScpticalBeliever
Thanks Hebdomadary. There have been some other sensitive developments in Newcastle such as the mock-Georgian development at Gray`s monument. It wasn`t that long ago since two sides of the Georgian Eldon Sqaure jst along from the monument were demolishe to created the blank walls of the Eldon Square shopping complex. It`s almost imossible to imagine such a thing happening now. I suppose it will take some time for Church to tear itself away from `Worker Utilitarianism`
Thanks Sceptical. Glad to hear Westgate House had sme redeeming features. I forgot to mention of course that on the other side of the street is the Station hotel, home to the Mass celebrated by the SSPX. Maybe it is an answer to prayer!
Jeffrey, thanks for pointing out how fortunate we are!
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