Once part of a larger retail complex, embracing the Castle Market area – regrettably demolished in 2015, the Gallery Shops are themselves, but a wrecking ball away from nothingness.
Linked by walkways, once populated by a multitude of rosy-cheeked, cheery shoppers, independent units and stalls operated in what was the better end of the High Street.
Over time, like many modern city the axis of energy shifts elsewhere, to newer more shiny developments – leaving hollow shells, echoing only to the footsteps of long gone ghosts.
For me the Helsinki 1952 Olympics, began in Morecambe 2016.
I was attracted by the stylish cover of this report, in the town’s second hand book shop, the vendor was expecting forty pounds, I exhaled, eyebrows raised and departed.
Reportless.
But my curiosity had been aroused.
Where is Helsinki, when was 1952 – what’s an Olympics?
I was up and running!
To begin, it was the Paavo Nurmi poster, created for the 1940 Games, which were never held because of the Second World War. It was just updated with the dates and the lines around the countries, drawn in red on a globe in the background. 82,000 large format copies were made in nine languages and 33,000 small format copies in 20 languages.
Look there’s Helsinki!
Where they built a stadium.
The Stadium Foundation, established 1927, started to implement that dream, and their first and foremost task was to get a stadium built, which would permit Helsinki to host the Summer Olympics. Building began on February 12, 1934, and the Stadium was inaugurated on June 12, 1938. Since its completion the Stadium has undergone eight important stages of development. The most important was the total modernization 1990-1994. At its maximum, in 1952, the Stadium accommodated 70 000 spectators. Today, the number of spectator places, all of them seats, is 39 000.
The Stadium arena, which has been described as the most beautiful in the world, is the product of an architectural competition. Arhcitects Mr. Yrjö Lindegren and Mr. Toivo Jäntti won the competition with their clearly lined functionalistic style design. The most important events in the life of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium were the XVth Olympic Games, 19. July-3. August, 1952. In the opening of the Olympic Games the spectator record of the stadium was reached 70 435 spectators and the olympic year is still an event which has collected most spectators. Whole year 1952 altogether 850 000 spectators.
The Stadium Building is 243 m long and up to 159m wide. The tower is 72m high. The Stadium covers 4.9 hectares. The Olympic Stadium is administrated by the Stadium Foundation. The Municipality of Helsinki, the Ministry of Education and the central sports organisations are represented in the Board of the Foundation.
The Stadium has been characterized as the world’s most beautiful Olympic Stadium, and what is exceptional about it is the fact that the Olympic buildings are in active use.
It defined the visual culture of the games.
My curiosity was further aroused when I discovered graphic material and images linking Coca- Cola to the games, how long have they been pumping athletes full of pop?
Quite some time it turned out:
The 1928 Olympic Games, which included 46 nations, marked the beginning of The Coca-Cola Company’s Olympic involvement – a presence that would continue to grow to this day, through sponsorships, donations and innovative support programs. That summer, a freighter delivered the U.S. Olympic Team and 1,000 cases of Coca-Cola to the Amsterdam event.
The morbidly obese’s drink of choice was forever aligned with the fleet of foot.
Despite the fact that Finland did not have a local bottler, Coca-Cola still was served to athletes and spectators at the Helsinki Olympic Games. More than 30,000 cases of Coca-Cola were brought to the event from the Netherlands aboard the M.S. Marvic, a rebuilt World War II landing craft, in what became known as “Operation Muscle.” Ice coolers and trucks from the corners of northern Europe also were brought in, turning the ship into a floating stockroom.
Gee thanks Yanks.
Whenever you had done well in an Olympics you would expect some reasonable reward, commensurate with your achievements, wouldn’t you?
What do you want, a medal?
Well yes.
On the obverse, the traditional goddess of victory, holding a palm in her left hand and a winner’s crown in her right. A design used since the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, created by Florentine artist Giuseppe Cassioli ITA -1865-1942 and chosen after a competition organised by the International Olympic Committee. For these Games, the picture of victory is accompanied by the specific inscription: “XV OLYMPIA HELSINKI 1952”. On the reverse, an Olympic champion carried in triumph by the crowd, with the Olympic stadium in the background. N.B: From 1928 to 1968, the medals for the Summer Games were identical. The Organising Committee for the Games in Munich in 1972 broke new ground by having a different reverse which was designed by a Bauhaus representative, Gerhard Marcks.
Olympics are obviously something of a global money spinner for many greedy nations, they will stop at nothing to cash in, producing millions of tiny stamps, at premium prices, to rinse the undeserving and guileless citizen.
Here are a few more examples of the graphic identity with a distinctive modern style:
There we have it, now we’re all ever so slightly older and wiser.
“The immediate problem after the war was to house those whose homes had been bombed. Longer-term objectives were to complete and extend earlier clearance programmes in order to reduce the population density and separate industry from residential areas, as reaffirmed in the County of London Plan of 1943. Some 5,000 people lived in temporary housing, including requisitioned properties and hutments or mobile homes, prefabs, of which the L.C.C.’s first in East London were in Florida and Squirries streets. All but 15 of its 190 ‘prefabs’ were in use in 1955, together with 309 requisitioned properties; at least 48 mobile homes were still in use in 1966. War damage had been repaired by 1953 and attention shifted to slum clearance; flats were to be allotted to those in cleared areas rather than by a waiting list. The L.C.C. and M.B. co-operated in drawing up five-year plans: by 1954 there were 16,852 permanent homes of which 2,434 were unfit, 1,711 in the L.C.C.’s clearance areas and 675 in the M.B.’s, together with 48 individual houses. The L.C.C. demolished 510 and the M.B. 550 between 1956 and 1960 and the M.B. demolished another 151 unfit and 46 other houses in 1961-2. Most were replaced by municipal estates, although both councils also acquired sites scheduled for industry, business, or open space. It was estimated that to find a site and build an estate took six years.”
The six-storeyed Mayfield House opened with 54 flats in 1964 on the east side of Cambridge Heath Road, south of the town hall.
Exploring London in an accidental and often tangential manner, often offers many surprises. Ostensibly in search of the V&A Museum of Childhood I tumbled into Mayfield House. The whole area, as can be seen in the above link, is home to several estates and homes, designed by the eminent architects du jour, Mayfield receives no such attribution, possibly the work of the borough office.
None the worse for that a building of some note, famously housing one of London’s first coin operated laundries, as seen in the promo video for The Streets – Dry your eyes.
The flats also contain a Somalian Centre, Bethnal Green having been home, for many years to Somali seamen – the subject of a recent photographic exhibition by Sarah Ainslie
“I first came to London by ship in March 1958. I stayed in Aldgate for a night and went to Newport where my cousin had a house. There are many Somalis there. From that day until I retired in 1990, I was in the Merchant Navy, and I brought my family over from Somaliland. In 1970, I moved back to London to Bethnal Green but my wife and daughters chose to stay in Newport.
In Somaliland, I owned over a hundred camels and sheep. Nobody keeps camels anymore, everyone sold them and moved to the city. They say, ‘It’s too much work.’ But keeping camels and sheep and living on a farm, it’s a good life because you eat every day. Everybody wants to do it again now.”
An intriguing structure with a dominant grid on the front elevation, sharp signage, extravagant exterior rear stairs, modular concrete screened, low-level car parking and a recently enclosed glassed gallery.
Following my previous post of archival images of Oldham Street, I took a walk along its length a week ago, to record what remained of the post war past.
Gone again the blackened façades, exuberant and differentiated signage.
Woolworth’s burnt out long ago, never to return, exit also C&A, don’t forget your coat and hat.
Affleck’s – same name different place.
Yates’s three down none to go, the last all-in is all out.
Three pubs prevail, some serving craft ale to the not so crafty.
Methodist Main Hall is mainly well-used and well, loved.
In low Winter light the upper floors dance in shadow and sun-glow, against a brighter than bright blue sky.
In the early 18th century, Oldham Street was apparently:
“An ill-kept muddy lane, held in place on one of its sides by wild hedgerows”.
In 1772, a privately owned track which is now known as Oldham Street was given to the public. The road took its name from Adam Oldham rather than from the place name. He was an acquaintance of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, which could account for the Oldham street location of the Methodist Chapel, opened by Wesley in 1781. Central Hall replaced the Chapel in 1885.
The area around Oldham Street became more affluent, with warehouses and shops, many of whose merchants lived within their shop premises. This is described by Isabella Varley, Mrs. Linnaeus Banks, a resident of Oldham Street, in her book The Manchester Man.
One Oldham Street shopowner mentioned by a number of writers is Abel Heywood, who spearheaded the mass distribution of books, supplying the whole country not only with penny novels, but also with educational books and political pamphlets. Heywood went on to become Mayor of Manchester.
The general well to do, mix of hustle and bustle, pubs, warehousing, grand stores, smaller specialist shops and services continued into the 1970’s. Woolworths, C&A, Affleck and Browns, Cantors, Dobbins attracted a steady flow of happy shoppers, I loved the mongrel nature of the mixed use architecture.
The focus if the city centre then slipped away to the newly built Arndale and pedestrianised Market Street.
Oldham Street awaited a new sense of place and purpose.
Ups ‘n’ Downs, it’s had its share of ups and downs.
Quite literally – the former Wellington Inn has an upside facing onto the busy A6 Wellington Road, and a downside opening onto Mersey Square.
Its fortunes similarly something of a rollercoaster ride, from busy town centre pub, to edgy pseudo-club, populated by late night uniformed bus drivers, swaying on the metre square dance floor.
Latterly something of a disco party bus, going nowhere fast.
Known variously as Glitz, Bentley’s and the Bees Knees.
Finally, partial occupation by a forlorn pound shop – defying economic trends by closing.
An architectural curiosity and a blank faced, gap toothed greeting to the Town’s visitors, there is talk of conversion to flats under the council’s stewardship.
Everyone’s life is towered over by one obsessive dream or other.
So why not have an overpowering, towering dream of a Tower?
I asked to come in, he said no.
What was once ours, opened in 1965 by PM Harold Wilson at the behest of Tony Benn, was sold by PM Margaret Thatcher.
– “It’s good to talk.”
It’s bad to gift ownership of other peoples’ towers to other people, in the name of “popular capitalism.”
So I dry my eyes, pick myself up and engage in an immersive therapy, absorbing the visual culture of the seemingly unobtainable Tower – like an eternally embittered Rapunzel in reverse.
In an uncertain universe, you can almost always rely on the launderette, to guide you on life’s soapy journey, through a complex series of immutable do’s and don’ts, arrows, slots, buttons and bows.
Standing alone in an unattended laundrette can be a chilling experience, a heightened state of awareness abounds, accentuating that all pervasive absence of presence.
The unseen hand, that write the notes, that speak to you in emphatic hurried caps, pinned or taped precisely on the walls.
The ghosts of clothes, still warm, now gone.
A Proust defying amalgam of aromas, that almost fills the air.
Just you and a series of slots, demotic instructions, care worn utilitarian surfaces and time.
Early morning on the A30 out of Okehampton and something is beginning to stir.
Two inscrutable Romanians and a curious garrulous traveller are going about their respective business.
They – filling buckets and arranging a complex array of cleaning fluids.
Me – just mooching with a compact camera.
Initially expressing an understandable resistance to my snappy ways, their consent was granted, following a series of complex hand gestures, smiles, and an open and honest request.
Moments later my job was done and theirs had just begun.
Should you, as I did wander down Northdown Road, Cliftonville, you will chance upon Pottons at 262.
By now however, ingress is more than somewhat inhibited.
It’s closed.
The most exciting and extant period fascia, once gave way to oak fittings and fixtures festooned with all manner of menswear, exotic and plain accoutrements, now inaccessible.
It’s gone.
A few sad remnants were on sale, administered in their final days by Lorraine, employed for 35 years in a family business, whose trade had once included made to measure, fine millinery and quality accessories for the discerning gent around town.
Modern Mooch 