Former Bradfordian Vincent Finn, now living in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, saw recent T&A articles about the opening of the City Park, which prompted him to mail us facsimiles of three coloured postcards of Bradford as it used to be.
The first one shows the Bank Street end of Broadway looking down towards Forster Square. A blue trolleybus heading towards the city centre is between two landmarks that no longer exist: C&A, which was next to British Home Stores, and the Ritz ABC cinema which, in the mid-1970s, screened The Life Of Brian, Jaws and All The President’s Men.
Vincent says: “The traffic looks very light. There are only three cars outside the Ritz. The shop next to the Ritz was a wallpaper shop called Blakeley’s. Just showing on the opposite side from the Ritz is the Swan Arcade building.
“By the way, the movie showing that week in May was Payroll. It starred Michael Craig, Francoise Prevost, Billie Whitelaw and William Lucas. It was released in 1961.”
Vincent wonders if anybody can identify the trolleybus route through Broadway because he does not remember it.
We asked Stanley King, former Bradford councillor, Lord Mayor, chairman of Metro and author of Bradford Corporation Trolley Buses and Bradford Corporation Motor Buses.
Mr King says: “Trolleybuses finished running in Broadway on November 17, 1962. They only ran for three years. The trolley in question was on a through route from Eccleshill to St Enoch’s Road, Wibsey, up Little Horton Lane.”
Forster Square, of course, is now awaiting a shopping mall from Westfield. But back in the early Sixties, it was modernised, as can be seen in the top picture on the ‘Greetings from Bradford’ postcard which also has images of City Hall and the boating lake in Lister Park.
The blue and cream bus just visible is a diesel bus. Mr King said the trolley wires were removed from Forster Square in 1962 because Bradford Corporation did not want to spend £17,000 on reorganising them.
“So they spent £100,000 on a new fleet of diesel buses to go through the square. Such is local government economics,” he added.
The third postcard shows Broadway after it was pedestrianised in the 1970s. Greenwoods, the men’s outfitters, is on the left, next door to Mothercare. At the far end is the Portland stone facia of Central House, bulldozed to make way for the Westfield shops.
The C&A store closed down on Thursday, May 31, 2001. The ABC Ritz became part of the Cannon cinema chain in 1985.
According to the late Geoff Mellor’s book Movie Makers And Picture Palaces, it closed in September 1987, with a screening of the movie version of Rita, Sue And Bob Too, based on two plays by Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, who died in December 1990.
Vincent also enclosed a page from the T&A of April 28, 1976, when the paper was a broadsheet. The story that caught Mr Vincent’s eye was headlined, ‘Petrol £1 by year end, says garage owner’.
“Oh for those good old days!” he says.
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