Dover Stage and Coach Hotel - They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Well paradise is pushing it, but the Dover Stage and Coach Hotel was quite well thought of for a while.

The postcard is one of those that many people would consider boring and it certainly wouldn't look out of place in Martin Parr's Boring Postcard book but it is the sort of card many collectors, myself included, enjoy. I do wonder, looking at the Martin Parr book today how many of the structures still stand. Now there's an idea for a book.  For those of interested in that kind of thing, the card was published by Judges' and is not dated but is thought to be from mid sixties to early seventies.

The Dover Stage Hotel was built in 1957, only the third hotel to be built in the UK in the post war period. The modern but unusual design was meant to attract visitors from mainland Europe . The hotel was not glamorous but it had a lot to offer a visitor. All its 42 rooms were sea facing and had their own balcony, the hotel also had several bars and a large ballroom.  One thing it did lack were en suite facilities and though these were later added, it was to the detriment of the room size. Despite this, the hotel did attract many visitors for a while
It was not just overseas visitors who enjoyed the facilities. The ballroom and bars were popular among locals  for  wedding receptions, formal dinners and dances . Some say that this was because there was a lack of choice as other nearby hotels had been destroyed in the war but its ballroom in particular remained popular until the hotel was closed in 1988.  Unfortunately by this point the people who counted, namely Dover District Council, considered The Stage Hotel to be past its sell by date and approval was granted for its demolition.
It was stated that the plan was to build flats on site, but for some reason, possibly because that had never been the  actual plan, the flats never materialised and a car park for the visitor attraction The White Cliffs Experience was built instead.  
Ironically The White Cliffs Experience was a bit of a flop, was nicknamed the White Elephant Experience, failed to attract the visitors and closed after 8 years. Plans to build a new hotel on the site have  come to nothing and it remains a rather underused carpark.

The MV Kalakala - From Icon to Embarrassment

I've mentioned before that I particularly like Art Deco related cards so when I heard about the MV Kalakala I just had to find a postcard of her.
This wasn't too difficult considering that she was once the second most photographed item in the world, with only the Eiffel Tower beating her. Not bad for what is basically a car ferry.
She was also one of the most popular exhibits at the 1962 Seattle World fair. The postcard below was sent from Seattle but many years earlier in 1946.

She was launched in 1926 as the Peralta but a fire 7 years later destroyed her superstructure. The brief for the redesign was to be distinctive and modernistic and eventually it was decided she should modelled on contemporary aircraft. The publicity was also intriguing, billboards were commissioned with simply Kalakala written on them in large letters.
The unusual design was a case of style over substance. The narrow car deck meant that she could carry less vehicles than other vessels and there were difficulties with docking due to the setback of the wheelhouse. Still, she remained popular with tourists who enjoyed moonlight cruises on the ferry.
The design faults didn't stop her from seeing heavy service in WWII where she was used to transport shipyard workers and Navy personelle. Her popularity as a vehicle  had waned by the 1950s and she gained unflattering nicknames such as the Silver Slug and Galloping Ghost.
She was retired from service in 1967 but was used as a factory ship until she was beached in 1970 and used to process shrimp. In 2004 she was sold to a private investor as her previous owners couldn't afford the upkeep. However she was evicted from her new home Neah Bay that year and the Macah people who had provided the anchorage sued the owners. I do not know the outcome of this but she was moved to Tacoma Washington.
By 2011 she was very frail and would up being sold for a nominal fee of a dollar with the understanding that the purchaser would renovate her. This did not happen and she was scrapped in early 2015.
When writing about the Kalakala I can't help picturing her as a tragic movie star, tragic beginnings,  good looks and publicity helping her get noticed  followed by rising and falling popularity. She has a brief moment in the sun again before retirement followed by lawsuits and eviction and finally ending up on the scrap heap unloved and largely unmourned apart from by those of us with a cult interest in these things. Kind of sad  really.     
If you are wondering about the unusual name she is from the Chinook Jargon trade language and means "bird". The Chinook Jargon, unlike the Kalakala, is still being used but with less than 650 speakers who knows for how much longer.
 
 

Leave No Marx

I took an unplanned break from blogging but we're back again now.

I have to admit that I'm finding it hard to stick to a particular schedule when blogging so from now one the posts are going to be as and when rather than sticking to various places on various days.

I was reading in the newspaper today about plans to rename all the streets, avenues, squares etc. in the former East Germany which had been named after Karl Marx. This made me wonder how many cards I have of such places.

During my, still ongoing, search I found this.

I did mention in my introduction to the blog that name change places will feature in the blog, especially with post marks which no longer exist.

The card was sent almost exactly 40 years ago, again a coincidence, from Karl- Marx-Stadt in the DDR to Hannover in the BRD.

Karl-Marx-Stadt was the name given to Chemnitz  on 10th May 1953, the town centre had been heavily bombed in WWII and the rebuilding  and the new name were meant to symbolise urban development under socialism.

I'm not going to go into a history of the fall of Communism and the changes in Europe at the time, but suffice to say Germany was reunified on 3rd October 1990.

The change of name back to Chemnitz had actually taken place a few months before with 76% of the town inhabitants voting in favour of reverting back to Chemnitz in a referendum held in April that year.

I'm trying to find out which of the places feature on the card still exist. I know the petrified forest still does and Strasse der Nationen has kept its name.

I can't find any info on the fountains. They are very of their time so they may have been destroyed but they are quite innocuous looking so maybe they still stand.

The other building on the card is the Interhotel Moskau. From what I can gather the building still stands but has changed its name to Hotel an der Oper.

Interhotels had a reputation for being used by the Stasi to spy on Western Tourists. You can't help but wonder if the sender of this card was subject to such surveillance.

The Planes, The Planes

I thought I would show something quite modern, by my standards, for today .

This card was sent to me in 2002 by my brother and was issued to commemorate the Commonwealth Games which were held in Manchester that year.

Just to show how quickly things change, only one of the airlines depicted on the card, British Airways, exists under that name today.
The other three, Air 2000, Britannia and bmi have all merged into other airlines.

Air 2000 had the shortest run, operating between 1987 and 2004 before being merged with First Choice Holidays in 2008 and later with Thomsonfly to create Thomson Airways. The aeroplane on the card is an Airbus A321.

Britannia Airways was once the largest chartered airlines n the UK. It was founded in 1961 as Euravia and was renamed Britannia in 1964. It is probably best remembered in the UK as being the subject of a docusoap, ubiquitous in the 1990s, in 1998 called Airline. In 2005 it was rebranded as Thomsonfly which as we saw above eventually became Thomson Airways.

British Midland International (bmi) has the longest history of the airlines featured and operated under a number of names during its lifespan. Founded in 1938 as Air Schools Limited, as a school for training pilots, it changed its name to bmi in 1964.
The airline had two subsidiaries, bmibaby which is also defunct and BMI Regional which is still operating in the UK and Europe.
BMI itself was integrated into British Airways in 2012.

 

Paulinerkirche - Leipzig's Lost Church (1956)

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have an interest in the GDR so you can expect to see quite a few East German cards on the blog.
I spent 5 months as student at Leipzig university in 1998 by which time University looked rather different from this 1956 postcard.
The Paulinerkirche is probably the most well know of the buildings on the card. It was built in 1231 and since the foundation of the university in 1409, the two have been closely related with the preachers appointed by the university.
During its proud history, which included inauguration by Martin Luther, many famous musicians have been associated with the church. Johann Sebastian Bach conducted holiday services there and Felix Mendelssohn's funeral was held there.  It also served as a military hospital during the Battle of Leipzig in 1813.
The church survived both word wars with little damage but a decision was made by the GDR government in 1968 to dynamite the church and the Augusteum next door as they were deemed ill-fitting for their concept of a socialist-orientated university.  Protestors were arrested.  A memorial, in the form of an A-frame sculpture in the size and location of the church was erected in 1993 and was still there in 1998 when I was a student in the city.
Today there is a new university church in its place and has the same shape as the Paulinerkirche. Church Services have been carried out there since 2009.

Edit - I've found  a picture which I took in 1998 as a student there, showing the A-frame.

Wednesday = Question Day

I'm sometimes asked if I have any cards I'm embarrassed about. I don't think I have any cards I'm ashamed of and there is certainly nothing I would hide away from people who wanted view my collection, but there are few cards that baffle me as to why I bought them.

Let's look at a couple.
This is a card depicting a holiday home on the Baltic Coast, I'm not sure why I bought it. It's true I have a liking for boring cards and I do have an academic interest in the GDR and every day life there but I do like good quality cards and this is not of good quality. The discolouration, for once, is not the fault of my scanner. I'm sure I could have found a better quality card to satisfy my interests.

Despite its ugliness I do still quite like it.

I'm going to do a rare thing and show the back (minus name and address) because it makes me laugh that the sender states they are visiting the beautiful Baltic. I've never been to that part of Germany but from pictures I've seen it is beautiful. You wouldn't know it from this card though.

The next card is also a mystery. I have been to Llandudno and it's lovely but the card below doesn't really give you this impression as its main focus seems to be a group of pensioners on a bench, with the scenery a sort of afterthought.

What is really weird is that I have two copies of this card, neither has been posted so I must have bought them myself. Now Llandudno is a tourist town so I'm sure there must have been prettier and more interesting cards available. I can only conclude that I must have bought them as some sort of long forgotten in-joke.

I do have some cards sent to me via Postcrossing which be hard to explain to people, semi naked men in sauna, Indonesian men with hooks in their back, but they will have to wait until another time.

St Peters Pro-Cathedral, Liverpool (1910)

I took a little break from blogging but everything should be business as usual this week.

A lot of my British cards will be from the north west of England as that is where I grew up and no matter how much I think I know about an area I always manage to discover places I never knew existed.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the big gothic Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, but how many of you were aware of its predecessor the modest looking St Peters which used to be in Church Street?

I wasn't either. Nor did I know that when the church was destroyed, Harrods planned on building their first store outside of London on the space once occupied by the building.


Firstly, let me apologise about the quality of the picture. I'm having problems with my scanner at present and I'm having to improvise.

The building, generally called ugly by most commentators, but I think that is rather unfair was situated on Church Street opposite what is now Marks and Spencer's. It was built in 1704 as a parish church became a cathedral in 1880 and closed in 1910, the years after this postcard was sent. Demolition was started in 1919 and completed in 1923. During its lifespan nearly 85 000 marriages took place and over 350 000 people were baptised. I do wonder when I see old buildings such as this if anyone is still in the city who remembers the place. Or how many people passing through the busy shopping street today know about the history of the place.

The spot the church stood on was later occupied by Woolworths, but that is also long and today Top Shop stands there, I wonder for how much longer. Apparently a Maltese Cross in the paving marks where the church once stood but I can't say I have noticed. I will make a point to look next time I am there though.

For more information on the St Peter's see here.

http://www.yoliverpool.com/st-peters-church-street-liverpool/

For information on other demolished buildings and streets of Liverpool visit here