It was 1972 and there were wintry scenes around the Civic Centre in the Barras Bridge area of Newcastle.
Much like today, there was a cold snap 50 years ago and the region was covered in a blanket of snow. Notwithstanding, the wintry Tyneside conditions provided for an attractive photograph. Our modern-day image was captured earlier this year. Back in 1972, the Civic Centre had only been up and running for five years.
Plans for a new ‘town hall’ dated back to before World War II, but it wasn’t until November 1960 that the city’s Lord Mayor laid the foundation stone. The building work was completed by 1967 for a total outlay of £4,855,000 (around £63m at 2022 prices). As a seat of local government, it replaced Newcastle’s Victorian-built Town Hall in the Bigg Market, which had long fallen into disrepair and would finally be demolished in 1973.
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The Civic Centre was officially opened on November 11, 1968, by King Olav V of Norway. The Chronicle reported how 400 guests crowded into the new building’s official banqueting hall, and tucked into a dinner of green turtle soup, followed by fillets of sole with mousse of lobster, and a main course of Angus beef, truffle sauce, artichoke hearts and parsley potatoes. The desert was a peach and meringue gateau, followed by sweetmeats and coffee.
A musical backdrop was provided by the orchestra of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, and there was dancing until midnight. “Newcastle is Norway’s gateway to Britain” toasted the King, and in the run-up to the big night, there had been much made of the ties between the two nations. “They came 1,000 years ago and conquered us - but this time the Vikings are more friendly,” the Chronicle noted.
If other 1960s and '70s buildings sometimes fell well short in terms of quality and aesthetics, and had relatively short lifespans before the demolition men moved in, the Civic Centre is considered to be a classic of its time and is Grade II-listed. The added attention to detail provided by features such as the distinctive 61-metre Carillon Tower with its seahorses, the River God Tyne statue, and the murals by Victor Passmore set the building apart from others during an era when, for a while, Brutalism was all the rage in architecture.
Over the last five-and-a-half decades the Civic Centre has been the focal point for official visits to the city by visiting royals and even an American president. Famously in 1977, President Jimmy Carter stood in front of a crowd of 20,000 Geordies, announcing, in that famous Georgian drawl “Howay the Lads”. The building has also been a meeting point for public demonstrations - all part of the city’s and nation’s democratic freedoms.
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