Depression architecture: Uplift from downturn

The last severe recession left a lasting legacy. Will this one? IMAGES of the Great Depression in Britain are dominated by grim pictures of rivers of cloth-capped unemployed men and, iconically in the north of England, newsreels of the march of the workless from Jarrow to London. Yet the more durable legacy of the 1930s encompasses some of the most stunning examples of British public architecture, as well as the advent of high-street shopping as a leisure activity. Newcastle’s arching Tyne Bridge, Liverpool’s modernist Philharmonic Hall and the classical rotunda of Manchester’s central library, which held 300 readers in what was then the country’s biggest reading room outside the British Library in London, were all products of the civic and, in some cases, philanthropic determination of local leaders. They wanted not only to provide work but also to transform their cities in the process. ... (link)