The man with the hat is entering Waterloo Street from Thornton Street, with the buildings on Marlborough Crescent in the distance. The photo was taken by Maurice Ambler and appeared alongside a feature in the Picture Post on May 1st 1954, entitled “Newcastle: Revival Of A City”.
The feature was a follow-up to one the magazine had published in 1938, which painted a bleak picture of human misery in the city, enraging its residents so much that the Lord Mayor demanded they revisit Newcastle under his guidance. World War II intervened but Maurice Ambler and the journalist Tim Raison found things had improved in 1954, noting that many people were still living in slums but local industries were booming and unemployment had fallen.
The photo of Waterloo Street does nothing to reflect their optimism. The range of gloomy late-Victorian buildings on the left belonged to the Co-operative Wholesale Society, built to contain their grocery, drapery, and boot and shoe warehouses. The Co-op had a huge presence in this part of town, with another warehouse complex next to this one. They were acquired by the North British Housing Association in 1980, who demolished them and built apartments in their place.
The building on the right is still with us. It was built in 1885, around the same time as the Co-op’s premises across the road, as a duty free warehouse called Charlton’s Bonds. It was occupied by the wine and spirit merchants A.H. Higginbottom & Co when the photo was taken, and has since been converted into apartments.