It's no exaggeration to the say the transformation of the Gateshead Quays area over the last five or six decades has been extraordinary. Our two photographs - taken 56 years apart - show how the riverside location once defined by 20th century heavy industry has totally given way to 21st century culture, tourism, leisure and education.
Today you will find the modern marvels of the Millennium Bridge (opened in 2001), Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art (2002), the Sage Gateshead (2004), and the Baltic Campus of Gateshead College (2008), as well as new hotels and private housing apartments, making the area largely unrecognisable from how it was just a handful of decades ago. A £260 million arena, hotel and conference centre complex, currently under construction, will further transform Gateshead Quays.
If the area on both sides of the River Tyne is a magnet for fun seekers and culture vultures these days, it was a very different place in 1967. On the Gateshead side, South Shore Road was home to the factories and workshops of heavy industry.
