Started work in the city centre in 1969 aged about 18 and worked there most of my life. My work and social life revolved around it. Visiting it now is depressing.
I lived in Birmingham for 36 years, I live in the Black Country now but I still frequently visit Birmingham. The city centre looks much better now they are building some skyscrapers and will all the redevelopment and new tram system, I'm quite proud of my home city in many ways and how far it's come. However, it's a nightmare driving into Birmingham city centre now if you don't have a low emissions car. The council is pants as well.
Lovely to see the old Gaumont widescreen cinema, which used to be at the end of Colmore Row. I can remember when the film The Sound of Music was pretty much a fixture there, at the Gaumont, month after month after month, back in the mid 1960s.
Big problem is that there in no one in the council that run Brum that care. Most are not native of Birmingham nor in fact the UK and are not interested in either its history nor importance as a manufacturing city. They only see pound signs so their whole take on Birmingham is to fill it full of flats and apartments and then they introduce a "clean air zone" so they can charge more money. Birmingham is not as important as London and its a City that is going to die as people just wont go there. The council have not even had the foresight to realise that if someone drives into Birmingham at 10pm for a night out they have to pay the charge twice if they stay after midnight. Complete madness from a council whose employees are mostly only interested in retiring as early as possible and taking as many sickies as possible. I for one have given up our manufacturing unit in Birmingham as a result of this and the oldest, YES, the oldest hardware store in Birmingham and possibly in the UK has also shut its doors for good as a result of the "clean air charge"
Birmingham and west midlands all over is a dump the council don't care and the city and region is a disaster everyone is depressed and fed up as the council does nothing and the local people don't even care hence why people look down on Birmingham and west midlands because its been neglected for decades and years of cuts and austerity and no one cares people are not progressive at all and people don't speak out and all many want is freeness and don't want to contribute in Birmingham and the west midlands.
I lived in Brum from 1954 to 1974. Brum seems to have this zealous need to demolish and rebuild everything frequently. As for the Selfridges building !! 😭
Oh, I always wondered what USED to be there before the present rather nice brown Wesleyan insurance building was erected, at the end of Colmore Row. Now I know, from this film!....just another (different, older) Wesleyan building! Very interesting, thanks.
I would have remembered the Second City later on as I was born in 1970 and so some of these images are before my time. As a kid, I would have gone to the Science Museum or Birmingham Art Gallery and this period closed when I was twelve!
All because of a manic drive to rebuild the City in the 1960s by two particular gentlemen, namely Alderman Frank Price and’s his architect friend Herbert Manzoni, who between them reeked more damage on Brum than the Luftwaffen did in WWll. There was no doubting that B’ham needed better housing at the time, but their headlong rush to modernise simply became an exercise in callously replacing some incredible Victorian architecture that represented much of Birmingham’s rich history and cultural identity with what amounted to nothing more than millions of tons of brutalist concrete! Or, in other word, committed one of the biggest acts of civic vandalism you can think of! I know, because l witnessed it whilst it happened!
