The Beresford Hotel, Glasgow

Today I'm looking at a building which is still in existence, in fact it's a listed building, but which has had several incarnations since being built.

It's an Art Deco building which I'm sure you all know by now are my favourites.

You probably can't read the card but it states Beresford Hotel Glasgow, Scotland's Newest Hotel. Standing proudly on the famous Sauchiehall Street it was known as Glasgow's first sky scraper and was the tallest building erected in the city during the interwar period. The designer, William Beresford Inglis took inspiration from contemporary cinemas.  

It was built in 1938 for those attending the city's Empire Exhibition which took place between May-December that year. The event attracted 12 million visitors but it's unknown how many of them made use of the hotel. What  is known is that it was a popular venue for American Servicemen during WWII.

It continued as a hotel until 1952 when demand for such accommodation began decline and for the next 12 years was Scotland's HQ for ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) before being sold to the University of Strathclyde in 1964 to be used  as student accommodation.

I have to say I'm quite envious of the students who lived in such a lovely building. My own Halls of Residence in Manchester were a rather less lovely 1970s building though I was quite fond of the place at the time. Initially they were only open to male students until the 1980s when female students were permitted to live on the top floor.

In 2002 they were sold again and now contain 112 private flats. Again, I'm quite envious of the people who live there.

The postcard is not dated and has not been posted, but from the description on the front I'd say it was from shortly after the hotel was built.

  

News

Please check out the sister blog to this.


http://cardsofextinction.blogspot.com/

Gorky - A Closed Soviet City

I have mentioned previously that places which have changed their names will feature in this blog. Nearly all of these places, including today's, will be from the former USSR.
Gorky was the name given to Nizhny Novgorod from 1932 until 1990 when it reverted back to its original name.
I'm actually quite surprised to find that these cards exist as from the end of the Second World War until the dissolution of the USSR, Gorky was one of the Soviet Union's many closed cities.
Westerners were not allowed to enter the city, meaning it was used as a place of exile for Soviet dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov.
The town did not appear on any maps and although it was a popular tourist spot for many Russians, street maps were not sold until the mid 1970s which makes it all the more surprising that this set of postcards(some of which have street names on the back), published in 1973 exist.

This one depicts a good view of one of the entry points of the town which could have proved dangerous should it have fallen into the wrong hands.

Here we have the station which would have been another strategic position.

Here we have some later ones from 1982, one showing the Kremlin and another showing popular department store "Children's World" None of the cards have been sent, which is a shame as it would have been interesting to know who bought and received the cards.

Unlike some cities since the dissolution, the Lenin Statue does still stand, though it was nearly destroyed by a man last year who managed to tear off the left arm before being stopped by police.

Canadian Pacific

Happy New Year everyone. 
The January blues are  reality for many of us and I know a lot of people like to think of getting away during  these times so I thought I would take a look at a couple of airline issued postcards this week.
Aeronautica and postcards do seem to go hand in hand, perhaps because they are both associated with holidays. I do know people who have amassed large collections solely of plane related cards. I'm not one of those but I do quite like airline related cards.
You don't tend to see airline issued postcards anymore. I don't know if it is a security issue or if postcards just are n't  considered a good method of advertising anymore. While modern ones don't seem to exist, vintage ones are not hard to find. 
Today's card is an advert for Canadian Pacific airlines. While searching for further information about them I did notice that items relating to them seem  very collectable. Canadian Pacific airlines were founded in 1942 and operated flights all over the world, pioneering the polar route to the Far East. They were renamed CP Airlines in 1968 until 1986 then reverted back to their original  name before being taken over by PWA a year later. The merged airlines were renamed Canadian Airlines before they too were taken over and merged into the still extant Air Canada.
There is no date on the card below but judging by the fashion I would say early 60s.

Now, I don't normally advertise in my blog but it would be remiss of me not to mention that the card above is from https://postcardinalclub.com/
If you're stuck for a gift for the postcard lover in your life or if, like me, you want to get something cheerful in the post then you can subscribe to get one or two vintage cards monthly or a single one off card.

New Brighton Open Air Baths 1934 -1990

Sorry for the long hiatus. There have a lot of real life things going on at moment, the biggest being that I have moved house and some of my postcard collection got separated so I'm still sorting through things. I hope I haven't lost anything.


I love this card, it contains two of my passions, open air swimming pools and art deco structures.

I'm sure quite a few of you reading this will be familiar with New Brighton baths and may have spent the odd summer day there and bathed in these waters.

Just as with the doomed New Brighton Tower, when the baths were constructed in 1934 they were the largest of their kind. Photographs of the era show that they really were quite spectacular looking at the time, bright and stylish and contemporary looking, the baths attracted 100,000 visitors in their opening week. As well as the 4 and 1/2 acre pool, visitors could enjoy lying on the terraces and soaking up the sun, watch the bathers or dine in the café and all for 6d.

From 1949 until the year before it closed it also became known for its Miss New Brighton Bathing Beauty contests which drew crowds of up 10 15,000 people.

As with everything on this blog it eventually came to an end. In February 1990 hurricane force winds damaged much of the structure and as repairs would have come to £4 million it was decided instead to bulldoze the pool and this happened in the summer of 1990.

Loyola Hall, Ranihill

The building depicted in the postcard below still stands, in fact you can even buy it if you have a spare £1.25 million.
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/controversial-historic-mansion-could-yours-11930684

However, as it is no longer used as a religious retreat, it fits in with the remit of the blog.
There is also another reason why I've decided to blog about this and that's because it was very familiar to me throughout my childhood and teenage years.  I imagine those of you from my home town reading this blog  will have their own memories of Loyola Hall, from a certain history teacher's inability to pronounce it to trying to sneak in at lunchtimes and being chased out by the gardener.
The building and site were closed to visitors and a large wall hid most of it from view, which made it all the more fascinating for me. I remember being very little and being unable to see anything at all over the wall except when I was on the bus and I could just make out the main hall and beautiful looking grounds. The fascination never abated and even at 18 I would try to sneak a peak over the wall to get a better view. When I eventually got to enter the place, in my early 20s and looking for a missing cat (he turned up safe and sound), it was something of an anti climax.
The Grade II listed building was built in 1824 and known as Rainhill House, later becoming Rainhill Hall after extension work in 1869.  It was owned along with most of the land in Rainhill at the time, by the Bretherton-Stapleton family. The devoutly Catholic family, who also founded the nearby St Bartholomew's Church, sold the building and grounds to the Jesuits in 1923. It was used mostly as a spiritual retreat with upwards of 2000 visitors yearly.
It was also used to house the North Korean Football Team shortly before their quarter final match in the 1966 World Cup. One can only wonder what the atheistic North Koreans made of the religious imagery, probably not a lot as they lost their match 5-2.
The building underwent many renovations in its history but the postcard seems to predate those and probably dates from around 1960.
Loyola Hall closed as a retreat in 2014 due to a lack of Jesuit priests to run the place.
Its not sure what the future will hold for the building and grounds. The are many rumours locally about the planned future of the place. I'm not going to comment on them as there are plenty of other places for people to have their say, but I will update the blog when we know for certain.

Update 2018

The hall is going to be a hotel and wedding venue.

http://www.sthelensstar.co.uk/news/16256427.Loyola_Hall_plans_for_hotel_and_wedding_venue_approved/

The Mystery of the MV Lyubov Orlova

In my last blog post concerning a ship I stated that she reminded me of a film star, well the vessel in the card below was named after a movie star, the Soviet Union's Lyubov Orlova.

You may not have heard of the actress, but you have probably heard of the vessel as she is the so called cannibal rat ghost ship that certain tabloids wanted us to believe was headed our way back in 2014.  This turned out to be false but it's not known what actually did happen to her.
MV Lyubov Orlova was built in 1976, a year after her namesake had died. She was built in Kraljevica, the oldest shipyard in the Adriatic which was then in Yugoslavia now Croatia. She was owned by the Far Eastern Shipping Company based in Vladivostok and was used for Antarctic cruises which she carried out without incident until 2006 when she ran aground at Deception Island, which itself is  home to abandoned scientific bases and might be of interest to some of you. 
The ship was taken out of service in 2010 and effectively placed under arrest. She was seized following a suit by a haulage contractor over a $251,000 debt. The 51 strong crew had not been paid for 5 months.
She was impounded at St John's in Newfoundland becoming gradually more derelict until she was sold for scrap in 2013. It was  when she was being towed away that her status as a ghost ship started. The tow line broke and the ship started to drift. As she was in international waters, there was some dispute as to whose jurisdiction she fell under and with no-one claiming responsibility the vessel continued to drift. She was sighted a couple of times in early 2013 the last time being on 12th March that year. It's not known what happened to her after that but she is believed to have sunk.
You may wonder how we can lose a 300 ft. ocean liner but she is not the only ship to have disappeared, though she is the only one, as far as I know, to have created such headline grabbing stories.
I've been searching for a card of the Lyubov Orlova since I first read those stories two years ago and I finally found one on ebay a couple of years ago. It's not the best quality but for me it's the "holy grail" of cards.
I'm not sure when it dates from but it's from the Soviet Era and published by Morflot.