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Buildings you've seen constructed and demolished

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    Buildings you've seen constructed and demolished

    When you are young you take the permanence of buildings for granted, but the older you get, the more disposable they become. Living in and around the Isle of Dogs for the past 40 years, there are quite a few buildings I've seen constructed and demolished. The first one would actually be in Algate, where there is currently the Algate Tower, but is used to be this weird, very 80s private leisure centre with offices on top of it, demolished in the late 1990s.

    I've seen printworks come and go, Westferry Printworks, built in the early 1990s on the Isle of Dogs was recently demolished to build identikit flats next to Millwall Dock. Murdoch's Fortress Wapping was not far from my primary school and opposite St George's swimming baths. I saw it being built and the accompanying protests and the other day when I drove past, I notice it is thankfully no more, much like the one in Surrey Quays, which is now a nightclub.

    There were also a number of buildings around South Quay DLR station which I saw constructed, but they were demolished by the IRA rather than by property investment speculators.

    #2
    One of my earliest memories is being at the grand opening of the phibsboro shopping centre, I remember being taken on a donkey ride by a clown and being terrified of both, it's still there but is destined for demolition in the next two years, the main stand in Dalymount park is due to go with it and that's only 18 years old

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      #3
      Not 'seen' as such, but I always thought the Kippax Stand at Maine Road should have been used for more than a decade.

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        #4
        i saw them build a stumpy block of apartments on hannover quay in about 2004 and then demolished in 2015. The thing that is there now, is an awful lot bigger.

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          #5
          Professional sports facilities are good for this in North America.

          Just within 20km of us, the second Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and Giants Stadium all fit the bill completely, while the current Madison Square Garden and Nassau Coliseum have been built and massively re-constructed (and the Brendan Byrne Arena built and effectively abandoned) in my lifetime.
          Last edited by ursus arctos; 30-12-2017, 19:05.

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            #6
            I think I've posted before that I saw Star Wars in 1977 at the Bijou Theatre. It was demolished and replaced by Morningside Mall, which thrived and then declined over 30+ years, and was replaced by the new Morningside Crossings complex.

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              #7
              Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
              Professional sports facilities are good for this in North America.

              Just within 20km of us, the second Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and Giants Stadium all fit the bill completely, while the current Madison Square Garden and Nassau Coliseum have been built and massively re-constructed (and the Brendan Byrne Arena built and effectively abandoned) in my lifetime.
              Is the Stadio d'ella Alpi still standing?

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                #8
                Don Valley Stadium - built for the 1987 World Student Games and now replaced by the Olympic Legacy Park or something like that.

                Rotherham Magistrates Court was built about a quarter of a century ago. Got a trip there with school not long after it opened, we got to sit in the public gallery and watch a few of the workaday cases that characterise a magistrates court. Closed last year as a result of government cuts and is currently being demolished - it might all be down by now but haven't been past for a couple of weeks.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by steveeeeeeeee View Post
                  Is the Stadio d'ella Alpi still standing?
                  The delle Alpi was demolished in 2009 and the current Juventus Stadium built on the site.

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                    #10
                    There was a shopping arcade in Cardiff at the South end of the Hayes. At the turn of the Millennium the one end of it was completely rebuilt with a little tower. Less than a decade later it was flattened, along with the very 80s car parks, Toys R Us and the city centre ice rink. It's all the St Davids 2 mall now.

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                      #11
                      The North Bank stand at Highbury

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                        #12
                        Nicholson's Walk was the first modern shopping mall I'd ever seen and was constructed in Maidenhead in the early 70s. It was generally referred to as "the Precinct" - a brand new word for me - and it's hard to believe what a radical thing this was in those days. It was also the first place I experienced automatic doors - just outside Harlequin Records and Burton's as you entered the precinct.

                        Designed as it was in the 60s it employed all the benefits of contemporary design; it was 100% underground, dark, low-ceilinged, built entirely of concrete and incredibly oppressive. Its supposed centrepiece was a big sculpture/structural support in grey painted steel with pebbledash seats/steps around the bottom, known colloquially as the Space Rocket. This was very quickly and permanently adopted by the local winos as it provided somewhere dry to sit and socialise for the day.

                        Needless to say, the new Nicholson's Walk is completely modern and bright, just like every other shopping mall in the UK.

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                          #13
                          The Isle of Dogs must be out on its own on this one- Taylor Report football stands aside.

                          At one time, not too long ago, sticking up pretty unremarkable 3 storey houses looked a bit of a punt. When the Canary Wharf developer went under, the developers might have been thinking they were lucky they'd not stuck up anything too grand. A few years later, and they'd have been thinking they ought to have gone really really grand. In about 1999, I was living around Royal Victoria, on johnr's old manor. That was incredibly run down, worst than the Isle of Dogs, but you could see that the new stuff was going to be very luxurious.

                          Steveee, you'd probably like this book a lot. I expect you know a lot of it first hand, but even so I reckon you'd like it. Out of date now, of course.

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                            #14
                            Does demolition by earthquake count?

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                              #15
                              My old school is a candidate for this - in the early '90s several new buildings went up, one after an old one was burnt down. All but one were torn down in 2010 when the new academy had the whole site rebuilt.

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                                #16
                                Don Valley Stadium

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                                  #17
                                  The Brian O'Malley Central Library in Rotherham. Sadly I can't find a photograph of it online.

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                                    #18
                                    Not sure whether this counts, but I can recall seeing the south tower of the World Trade Center under construction when visiting New York as a wee lad in 1969.

                                    Obviously, most of us witnessed - mainly via TV - the other end of the story.

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