Paragon Arcade, Hull

Hull once had at least six arcades, but of the two which survive, Paragon Arcade in the centre of the city pre-dates the old town’s Hepworth Arcade by two years, opening its doors in 1892.

It runs in a straight line for about 80m, connecting Paragon Street and Carr Lane. Its name is carved into the stone high up below the top floor at both ends of the arcade; the glass ceiling, with its ironwork frames, is still the dominating feature, with a pointed archway marking the entrance at either end, and red and white stonework above the individual shop units along the length of the arcade.

The florist’s spills flowers out onto the tiling at the Paragon Street end, while down at the other end are the Paragon Barbers, proudly declaring in their shop window, “In Paragon Arcade since 1942.” There is also a jeweller’s, a café, several other eateries, and a couple of vintage shops for clothes and vinyls. It is very much a connecting walkway between two city centre streets (along the lines of a Parisian ‘passage’), and is clearly still a draw for tourists and locals alike, with several families taking selfies during our short visit in 2022.

My favourite shop today

The Florists’s in Paragon Arcade have their bouquets spilling out over the whole of the Paragon Street end of Paragon Arcade, but I love this shop also because it brings up sweet memories from my own childhood when the Hull Daily Mail office was here and I could rush down to look in the window to see the latest photographs from Hull City’s last match displayed there.

My pick of the arcade’s past

Two schoolboys were chased out of the arcade by a passer-by who spotted them stealing sheet music from the front of Friedenthal’s music shop in 1905 (Nos 3 & 4). They were later arrested and remanded for 7 days. Jacob Friedenthal was a Russian Jew who had emigrated to Hull with his wife and son, all of whom settled and stayed in Hull, Jacob dying in 1921, his wife Annie in 1912, and his son in the 1950s. The Friedenthals were physically assaulted later in 1905 when they tried to stop a gang of men selling pirated music scores in the arcade. Father and son were both attacked in the incident.

A bike shop in the arcade was in the news in 1915 when a man in khaki uniform stole a bike from the shop. He was pursued by the owner, who was hit on the head when challenging the man he had chased, but the court gave the suspect the benefit of the doubt when he argued that there were a lot of men in the area in uniform that day and the shopkeeper had picked the wrong man. An unfortunate sign of the WW1 times.

Stories here courtesy of www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, The British Library Board; 1) Hull Daily Mail, 28 December 1905, Reach PLC; 2) Hull Daily Mail, 12 April 1915, Reach PLC.