Sadly, Birmingham has a long tradition of tearing down its recent past (‘If the Ringway goes, I’m leaving’ – the fight to save Birmingham’s brutiful masterpieces, 12 September). As an art student in the city in the late 1950s, I was fortunate enough to experience some of the buildings that disappeared in the “highway fever” of the early 1960s. Chief among these was the Woodman, a Victorian public house that stood at the top of Suffolk Street. A veritable Victorian temple of mahogany and engraved mirrors, the double entrance to this pub was flanked by painted tile panels depicting woodmen at work, with a carved stone statue of a woodman in between them. This entrance alone was worthy of listing.
Also falling victim to the bulldozers and wrecking balls were Easy Row, a fine Georgian terrace of buildings adjacent to the Woodman, and, behind it, Birmingham’s reference library, which had its entrance in Chamberlain Square. Circular in plan, it had an awesome interior, with gallery after gallery of bookshelves ascending to the roof. There is a savage irony in the fact that John Madin’s replacement for this iconic building has now – after a much shorter life – been torn down. The Library of Birmingham, the new equivalent of both, had better watch out!
But then, regardless of which party is in power at the Council House, Birmingham seems to have an insatiable desire to reinvent itself. And that may be, however regrettable the results are, one of its strengths.
Graham Downie
Studley, Warwickshire
• Oliver Wainwright describes the tearing down of the old brutalist library in Birmingham as shameful. I can only assume that he did not have to visit the library to research his A-level coursework, as I did when I was growing up in the city.
The squeaking escalators and crumbling concrete were not exactly an inspiring setting. The current airy, light-filled library, while not perfect, is infinitely better than the old one.
Birmingham has never looked better in my lifetime, with the older buildings cleaned up and pedestrianised zones replacing inhospitable main roads. The city is finally moving out from under the long shadow cast by the mid-century experiments in architecture that were thrust upon it. The postwar planners were monsters, bulldozing much of the city’s Victorian heritage with scarcely a thought for posterity. It is entirely fitting that their own works are set to meet the same fate.
Angus Wood
London
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