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Between August 9, 1940, and May 9, 1941, Merseyside endured 68 air raids gutting much of the historic neighbourhood surrounding the docks. By far the worst architectural victim was John Foster's Greek revival Custom House, a testament to Liverpool's 19th-century ambition to play the Athens of the North: a city of commerce and culture reflected in an uniformly classical urban aesthetic. But rather than rebuilding this shattered civic icon, the postwar planners opted for demolition. It was a decision that set the tone for the ensuing decades of planning terror as dock warehouses, stuccoed Regency houses and elegant piazzas fell victim to the ring-roads and clearances.
Fifty years on, now that Liverpool basks in its status as Capital of Culture, one might have thought the demolitions would ease up. Yet rather than commemorating its extraordinary civic inheritance, the planners are repeating the mistakes of their postwar predecessors. For as Liverpool's prosperity accelerates, the council is still prone to dismiss its marvellous historic fabric as an impediment to growth.
Under the past ten years of control by the Liberal Democrats, some 36 listed buildings have been lost to the bulldozers. Whereas Merseyside once enjoyed a Georgian building stock comparable to Bath, what little remains is now under threat. In addition to the terraces of Seel Street, there are numerous properties in Duke Street, Dale Street and Great George Square - as well as such listed landmark churches as St Luke's, Berry Street and St Andrew's - equally at risk. And that is excluding the Toxteth terraces and Welsh Street houses that remain under planning blight.
The difference this time is that the threat comes as much from property developers, whose lawyers and bully-boy chicanery runs rings round council officers, as grandiose redevelopment schemes. But the results are the same as buildings slip into disrepair, night-time demolitions “happen” and inexplicable planning permissions are granted.
Unfairly, Liverpool has often been accused of wallowing in the past. If only it did. Today what every successful city requires, in the competition for new businesses and graduate residents, is a sense of place and authenticity that can only come from the historic fabric, architecture and attitude of its streets and spaces. The postwar redevelopment of Merseyside did everything it could to destroy that civic identity. If the choice facing the Capital of Culture this year is between the 1820s and 1950s, then it must save the Georgian terraces and ease up on any more Modernist monstrosities.
Tristram Hunt is author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City
Source:
Times Online
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