Nicholas Craig column
Oct 31 2003 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal
We have a new millionaires' row on Tyneside. Carlton Terrace's Dobson-designed 1840s townhouses are being snapped up for between £1m and £2m each.
Weeks after the launch of the scheme, only four of the 14 terraced houses remain for sale.
It makes you wonder how many other terraces, as elegant as Carlton, were bulldozed to make way for blocks of concrete flats in the last century.
Fading 50-year-old tower blocks will never win the accolades of Dobson's designs, or boast million pound price tags.
Newcastle's demolition decade - the 1960s - was part of T Dan Smith's vision of the city as the `Brasilia of the North'.
During a few short years, superb buildings like the 18th century Royal Arcade, part of old Eldon Square and dozens of streets of 19th Century properties were demolished in what many see as a prime example of vandalism.
Ironically, T Dan Smith said: "I wanted to see the creation of a 20th Century equivalent of Dobson's masterpiece," as he sanctioned the wholesale demolition of original examples.
His vision, however, also blasted away the slow moving, decaying city centre infrastructure and dramatically modernised Tyneside.
It brought us urban motorways, Metro, pedestrian walkways, Eldon Square shopping centre, a Scandinavian-style Civic Centre, the first steps towards Newcastle Airport and those tower blocks - or streets in the sky as T Dan Smith chose to call them.
In my eyes, it takes a great deal to forgive the destruction of the superb Royal Arcade for the clod-hopping concrete Swan House structure that took its place. Too many gracious Georgian houses were dismissed in a frenzy of high profile building.
However, what T Dan Smith achieved undoubtedly helped traffic to run smoothly and pedestrians walk easily around the city streets.
T Dan Smith's remarkable vision was for a "city free and beautiful", to rival the world's finest. His radical approach was required to bring about change but it did not produce the space-age capital of his dreams.
21st Century Newcastle's unique charm lies in the way centuries sit cheek by jowl with each other. The urbane classicism of Grey Street, the historic heart of Grainger Town and the contemporary chic of the Quayside co-exist in harmony - for the most part.
The motley mix succeeds where T Dan Smith's idea of a relentlessly modern metropolis would have failed.
One thing's for sure - we'll never see brutal demolitions on the scale of the 1960s again. The millionaires can rest easy.
* Nicholas Craig is a partner at Watson Burton law firm.
