Monday 6 July 2009

Old Drawings #38



Hanover Street (Charcoal on cartridge paper)

I did this sometime in 1997, I reckon. It's a drawing of an old Newcastle street near the Quayside, with some fascinating old warehouses at the left.

Someone bought the warehouses years ago, probably with the intention of converting them into fashionable apartments, but then discovered that they were subject to a Grade II listing. Even worse, from their point of view, the listing applied to the inside of the buildings.

As a consequence they stood empty for a long.

Then there was a fire. Curious that, but luckily the fire didn't do too much damage.

Then a couple of years later, there was another fire. Strangely the security seems not to have been tightened sufficiently after the first fire and the second fire more or less destroyed the better half of the warehouses. Now they've been converted into fashionable apartments. So that's alright then.

3 comments:

Jean Spitzer said...

We occasionally have the same curious fires in our part of the world, too. Laws only work for the law-abiding.

At least we have your drawing, of what was.

Anonymous said...

Lovely drawing before the fires I presume...fires have a habit of breaking out in the middle of the night here is Western Australia especially in old listed houses that someone wants to pull down and can't.

--Patsy King

Simon Jones said...

Like this a lot, road moves into oblivion.....nice.