I’VE ALWAYS taken issue with those who criticise the image of Bradford city centre, visitors and citizens alike. I’m not talking here about City Park or Broadway but about the streets themselves, the thoroughfares we all use for shopping or simply moving about from home to work to bus station or car park.

It’s true that if you never raise your eyes above the level of the shopfronts you will be greeted with a mix of typical town centre facades: chain store branches, banks and building societies, coffee shops, a few independents and an array of “poundshops”, phone shops and e-cigarette sellers.

So much so typical town or city centre, to a greater or lesser degree depending on which part of the country you are in.

There are, of course, some notable exceptions, the best of which must surely be the Hustlergate frontage of the Wool Exchange which leads the way into one of the finest-looking bookshops in the country.

To enjoy it at its best you really need to look above door lintel-height to see the expanse of glass and how it blends in with the gorgeous building behind it.

And that is the secret of enjoying and appreciating our city centre: looking up.

Leaving aside the more modern offerings of the Kirkgate Centre and areas such as Rawson Place, from just about any vantage point the view from above a height of, say, 10 feet, is simply stunning.

Sadly, it is hugely under-appreciated by so many people, especially a good number of those who have lived here all their lives.

But the sheer quality of Victorian architecture should be enough to move anybody with even the most distant appreciation of the aesthetics of our built environment.

So much of it, of course, was created in an era when money was no object and the rich mill and factory owners were motivated by the urge to make their wealth conspicuous and the city fathers were engaged in an unspoken competition to make the environment grander than that of their northern neighbours on both sides of the Pennines.

Whatever the motivation, they left a truly uplifting legacy of a kind that it is impossible to imagine any business shelling out for in this day and age.

If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to sit in the window of the café in the afore-mentioned Waterstones bookshop and look across at the Nat-West Bank building on the corner with Bank Street. What company nowadays would invest the sort of money required to create those elegant church-like windows or that Parisian-style turret?

Or stand outside Bradford Crown Court and stare across at the rear façade of the Telegraph & Argus building. Who nowadays would employ architects to recreate the style of the Palazzo in Venice for the wool warehouse that eventually became the newspaper’s home in 1925?

Those are just examples. There are many, many more – reflected in the fact that there are more than 2,000 Grade I and II-listed buildings in Bradford Metropolitan district.

There are places that would celebrate having even a tenth of our architectural heritage. So why do we find it so hard to appreciate it? And, perhaps more so, why do we find it so hard to want to nurture and protect it?

The furore surrounding the redevelopment of the former Arensberg’s Jewellers (and, later, Herbert Brown’s) shopfront in Ivegate is a case in point. The Council is apparently “considering” enforcement action after the current owner tore out the traditional shopfront and then applied for retrospective planning permission after replacing it with a bog-standard glass and aluminium frontage.

But Ivegate is in a conservation area. And what exactly is the Council conserving if it can’t stop people desecrating historic shopfronts?

It’s not just about waving a big stick, though. We need to persuade shop owners of the value and importance of creating a quality shopping environment and the benefits it will bring them.

Perhaps walking them round the city centre with their chins in the air would help.

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