Your cities 'Icon'

[belfastuniguy]

Goliath being completed in 1969 and Samson in 1974, by that time the yard had started to decline.


The famous ships were long gone, though we have the heritage, building every White Star Line vessel, HMS Belfast and SS Canberra to name just a small number.

[cardiff]

Thanks! Apart from the Titanic, does the city have alot around it with reards to the ships it built? Ive always had a fasination with the glamour of the ocean liners (there isnt much in Cardiff, in physical form for the citys reason for being which is not as glamourous as Ocean liners).

[Boards]

You should visit the new transport museum in Glasgow then. They have models of the liners built in the city.

[cardiff]

I remember going to see some as a kid in Glasgow (and typically not apreciating it), has the museum opened?

[belfastuniguy]

Originally Posted by cardiff

Thanks! Apart from the Titanic, does the city have alot around it with reards to the ships it built? Ive always had a fasination with the glamour of the ocean liners (there isnt much in Cardiff, in physical form for the citys reason for being which is not as glamourous as Ocean liners).

Not yet, due to recent history the city was rather slow on capitalising on it's incredibly long and illustrious maritime history. That's all changing now, in a few years we'll have Titanic Belfast which will be one the best maritime museums in the world and hopefully more to come. We're finally celebrating our shipbuilding past with museums and public art.

[Saul Silver]

Well to start Manchester is an icon of the North, and Manchesters icon has to be Old trafford.

[belfastuniguy]

Originally Posted by Saul Silver

Well to start Manchester is an icon of the North, and Manchesters icon has to be Old trafford.

Icon of the North?

I see Newcastle as being more iconic with the bridges and Angel of the North.

Old Trafford doesn't look that iconic really, it's just a beast of a stadium that has been added to and added to over the decades. It's nothing special to look at.

[EuxTex]

Originally Posted by Saul Silver

Well to start Manchester is an icon of the North, and Manchesters icon has to be Old trafford.

Cricket or soccer stadium?

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Manchester doesn't really have an icon. It wasn't a commercial city in Victorian times in the same vein as Liverpool/ Belfast/ Dublin. It's most iconic building, the Town Hall, seems more interested in setting a mood than being iconic



Personally I also consider the Great Northern Warehouse iconic of Manchester



The buildings in Manchester which are most concerned with being iconic are modern: The Civil Justice Centre, Beetham Tower, Urbis, No1 Deansgate. There is a very clear narrative to Manchester's architecture: from mill town to steel and glass commercial centre



Manchester's mills are also very iconic, although I couldn't possibly pick out one that is more iconic than the rest

[Awayo]

Dublin? C18th maybe. And Belfast? Wuh? Belfast is somewhat like Manchester btw. And that's no insult to either. Big old Victorian red-brick British mill towns with a solid central grid and lots of fugly but likable Victoriana in their centres. Neither beauties but satisfying in their way like eating a huge knobbly scone

And its unfair to say that Manchester, although not on the same page as Liverpool, Glasgow or London, was not a commercial centre at all. It's importance was local but its region's textiles industry, for which is was a commercial centre (although they need to buy its raw material from Liverpool's exchange and at the prices set by that international trading floor), was an enormous one. Kind of like a market town but the biggest market town in England.

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Originally Posted by Awayo

Dublin? C18th maybe. And Belfast? Wuh? Belfast is somewhat like Manchester btw. And that's no insult to either. Big old Victorian red-brick British mill towns with a solid central grid and lots of fugly but likable Victoriana in their centres. Neither beauties but satisfying in their way like eating a huge knobbly scone

And its unfair to say that Manchester, although not on the same page as Liverpool, Glasgow or London, was not a commercial centre at all. It's importance was local but its region's textiles industry, for which is was a commercial centre (although they need to buy its raw material from Liverpool's exchange and at the prices set by that international trading floor), was an enormous one. Kind of like a market town but the biggest market town in England.

Belfast is much more Liverpool than it is Manchester, aesthetically. Not least because of all the Georgian townhouses and neoclassical conventionally beautiful Edwardian/ Victorian civic buildings. These pictures are of Belfast, but they could be easily mistaken for Liverpool: (Note the town hall is almost identical to one of Liverpool's Three Graces)



image hosted on flickr

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[belfastuniguy]

I agree, Belfast has more in common with Liverpool than it does with Manchester. Which is hardly surprising given the maritime connections between the two cities.

[EuxTex]

Originally Posted by belfastuniguy

in a few years we'll have Titanic Belfast which will be one the best maritime museums in the world and hopefully more to come.

And, I for one am impatiently looking forward to it's opening. Is there a tentative opening date?

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It's interesting that all of Britain's most iconic buildings are in london. Even the Victorians were Londoncentric when it came to what gets built where.



























and the newest addition to london's portfolio of icons...

image hosted on flickr

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[Nathan Dawz]

Originally Posted by Awayo

And its unfair to say that Manchester, although not on the same page as Liverpool, Glasgow or London, was not a commercial centre at all.

Absolutely. We need to remember that Manchester was the centre of the global cotton industry, on which it built it's wealth. And once the Manchester Ship Canal was built, the flow of trade coming into Manchester's docks surged as goods could be imported and exported without having to go through Liverpool. To say it wasn't a 'commercial city' is slightly ludicrous. Cotton made Manchester in the same way that slavery made Liverpool.

Anyway, Manchester does have icons. Perhaps not as immediately famous of what other cities have, but icons nonetheless.



image hosted on flickr

[JamesWales]

I'm no Manchester United fan, but the City of Manchester Stadium (or whatever it's called now) instead of Old Trafford. hmm...

[Boards]

Originally Posted by cardiff

I remember going to see some as a kid in Glasgow (and typically not apreciating it), has the museum opened?

Yeah. 400,000 visitors in the last six weeks. Good numbers considering it's the first building on a brownfield site away from the City Centre.

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