ARCADES PROJECT

It’s hard to believe today that when City Arcade opened in 1901 it was part of a planned series of arcades that took shoppers under cover through the streets of Birmingham’s city centre. Much of the area ended up as rubble after a massive bomb attack in April 1941, but a small stretch of City Arcade survived between Union Passage and Union Street.

There’s only a handful of shop units left, with perhaps half of these occupied today: a café, with pinball machines looked intriguing but closed early morning; a large barber’s; a Korean food shop; a ‘corner shop,’ appropriately on the corner of Union Street; a luggage shop; and a computer shop.

This was a classic late-Victorian arcade when it was first built. Look up today, and there are hints of that old grandeur, with ornate carved ironwork on the balcony, chandeliers hanging from the glass ceiling, and decorated arched ceilings by each entrance arch.

If I was working in Birmingham tourism or heritage departments, I would make more of City Arcade, and have some boards up showing images – or even maps – of the original series of arcades over the city centre, and perhaps even some photos of the damage caused by WW2 bombs. At least the city centre developments of the 1960s and 70s didn’t do away with this small section of City Arcade.

My pick of the arcade’s past

There was a gas explosion in a dress boutique in the arcade in 1906. The owner was down in the basement at the time, and his shop assistant had her hair singed by the flame that shot through the store and across the arcade, breaking a glass window in the shop opposite and setting a feather boa on fire in the shop next door.

In 1908 the body of a man was found on the beach on the Isle of Wight. The connection to the City Arcade in Birmingham was that on the collar of the shirt he was wearing, was an address: The Quadrant, 11 City Arcade, Birmingham. The body was eventually identified as a fruit stall holder from a nearby Birmingham market, though it remained a mystery why he had gone to the Isle of Wight, and a relative said merely that he had received a letter from Southampton stating that they had in their possession a black bag belonging to the man.

Christmas 1919 saw a dispute in the arcade over one shop which had removed its plate glass window and had a ‘Father Christmas’ figure sitting on a chair in the shop front with a bag of mystery goodies. This drew crowds to the shop and blocked the arcade sufficiently for other shopkeepers to complain to the landlord and an injunction to be brought against having ‘Santa’ sit in the shop window, without a window…

Just after Christmas 1940 one of the mainstays of the arcade, a furniture store, went up in flames, causing smoke damage in many of the arcade shops, though the fire brigade got to the blaze before the arcade itself burnt down. A bomb then damaged much of the arcade in April 1941, and the site was left undeveloped for almost 10 years after the war, until the land was bought by developers who wanted to build ‘a modern shopping centre’ instead of arcades.

Sources for the above stories all from www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and specifically: 1) Birmingham Mail, 20 June 1906 – Reach plc; 2) Reynolds’s Newspaper, 30 August 1908 – British Library Board; Erdington News, 5 September 1908 – Reach plc; 3) Birmingham Gazette, 17 December 1919 – Reach plc; 4) Birmingham Daily Gazette, 28 December 1940 – Reach plc.

What memories do you have of visits in years gone by?

Have you got any good stories to add on the past of this arcade?

What’s your favourite shop in the arcade today?

Have you seen this arcade in any films or books?

Is there a website for this arcade?

Not for the arcade itself but Tilt cafe (with the arcade machines in it) has a very good website which includes a potted history of the whole arcade. Link to that page here.