TRIVIA: Buildings that were demolished soon after being built

[AY1975]

Can you think of any examples of buildings that were demolished soon after they were completed? This can include examples from the UK or abroad. I wonder what is the record for the shortest time between a building being completed and being demolished?

I believe that when the Croydon Tramlink (now officially known as London Trams) network was being built, a new-build apartment block in the Blackhorse Lane/Addiscombe area and one of the new-build houses on the site of the old Coombe Road station had to be demolished to make way for the tramway.

In Jena in eastern Germany, a multi-storey car park was built in the town centre in the mid-1990s, but shortly after it was completed the authorities changed their minds and decided to demolish it and build an underground car park instead.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Northwich Victoria FC's shiny new 5000+ capacity "Victoria Stadium" in Wincham, Northwich was opened in August 2005. The ground was closed less than six-and-a-half years later after Vics had gotten into major difficulties and then demolished in September 2013. The site is now utilised by a specialist chemicals company.

 

[dangie]

In the early 1970’s my friend & I booked a fortnight holiday to Ibiza. This was at the start of the Spanish holiday boom. New hotels were being built weekly. The pictures in the brochures were usually artists impressions. A couple of weeks before we went I was watching the Sunday evening news. It showed a clip of an hotel being blown up. Our hotel. Apparently it had been built directly in the flight path of the airport...!!

 

[Stuwhu]

Manchester City FC spent £16 million building a new stand in 1995 but moved grounds in 2003 and it was knocked down in 2004

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Manchester City FC spent £16 million building a new stand in 1995 but moved grounds in 2003 and it was knocked down in 2004

Which stand was that? The one replacing the (in)famous Kippax terrace? Perhaps as short-lived as the Northwich Victoria stadium, and almost certainly more expensive!

 

[Stuwhu]

Yes, The Kippax Stand.. https://www.mancity.com/news/club-news/club-news/2019/city-dna/city-dna-44-kippax-stand-maine-road

 

[Gloster]

My doctors’ surgery was moved into a new building in 2014. For the last year or more they have been trying to arrange new premises so that they can knock down the present building and put up a new one: all due to subsidence..

 

[D365]

In the early 1970’s my friend & I booked a fortnight holiday to Ibiza. This was at the start of the Spanish holiday boom. New hotels were being built weekly. The pictures in the brochures were usually artists impressions. A couple of weeks before we went I was watching the Sunday evening news. It showed a clip of an hotel being blown up. Our hotel. Apparently it had been built directly in the flight path of the airport...!!

What happened to your holiday?!

 

[dangie]

What happened to your holiday?!

We were actually moved to another hotel only about a hundred yards away….!!

 

[PTR 444]

In Bournemouth, the controversial Waterfront building just to the east of the pier was completed in 1998/99, but after complaints from residents, it was knocked down in 2013, restoring the sea view from Bath Road.

Lidl are going through the phase of demolishing new-ish stores to be replaced with bigger ones. For example, its Ferndown store originally opened in 2003 but that has now been cleared to make way for a bigger new-build opening later this year.

 

[dgl]

Although it was not demolished Aldi had a store in Yeovil for a few years before it closed and became a Farmfoods and Majestic wine, Aldi were then not present in Yeovil for a few years before interestingly building a new store, that was built on an old car dealer, right next to their old store!

 

[davehsug]

A rather longer period between build & demolition, but it was a very large building. The 18 storey Unity House in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, was built in 1973 and demolished in 2006.

 

[dosxuk]

One of Sheffield University's buildings was demolished due to subsidence even before it was completed - https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk...-science-hub-to-be-knocked-down-and-restarted - original building work started in summer 2019 and then everything was pulled down in autumn 2020.

They have however since corrected the foundations and rebuilt the building from scratch.

 

[EdinRH]

Three inter-related examples of school buildings in north Edinburgh which have turned out to be short-lived (although not as short as some examples above)

• In the 1980s, there were plans to close both Trinity Academy and Leith Academy with the replacement being a new school in Leith. The new school was built, but scaled down, and Trinity was refurbished and extended instead with work being completed in 1995. There are now plans to rebuild Trinity which involves demolishing the newest buildings along with a previous extension built in the 1960s, with only the original listed Victorian building being retained.
• Ainslie Park School in Pilton closed in 1991 and was merged with Broughton High School at Comely Bank. Ainslie Park had only existed since 1949, construction having being delayed by the Second World War. Had the Trinity/Leith merger occurred, presumably Ainslie Park would have been saved as the Granton, Wardie and Goldenacre areas served by Trinity are much closer to Pilton than to the proposed new school in Leith. The Ainslie Park building was subsequently used as an annexe of the local Further Education college for a spell, before being demolished (the listed facade was retained) when housing was built following the relocation of the college.
• Broughton High school itself was demolished and rebuilt on an adjacent site in the late 2000s. It was only built in the early 1970s, as a replacement for a school in the Broughton area of Edinburgh (retaining its predecessor's name in spite of not being in the same locality)

 

[90019]

In Gorebridge, outside Edinburgh, there were 64 council houses built in 2009 that were evacuated in 2014 because of a gas leak from old mineshafts below. When investigated, it turned out they hadn't been built with gas membranes under them.
After sitting empty for 2 years, they were demolished in 2016.

 

[181]

Not a record-holder, but railway-related: the youth hostel next to Oxford station was opened in 2001 (I think I've heard that it was on former railway land unwisely sold off by Railtrack, but I'm not certain of that) and has recently been demolished to make way for the expansion of the station.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Manchester City FC spent £16 million building a new stand in 1995 but moved grounds in 2003 and it was knocked down in 2004

Didn't Arsenal build a new stand in the 1990s that only lasted about a decade until they moved to their new stadium? I remember there being a hoarding behind one of the goals with a crowd painted on it for a season or two.

Cottingley Station was built and opened in the early 1990s but will be closed and removed when nearby White Rose opens.

 

[Falcon1200]

Not a record-holder, but railway-related: the youth hostel next to Oxford station was opened in 2001 (I think I've heard that it was on former railway land unwisely sold off by Railtrack, but I'm not certain of that) and has recently been demolished to make way for the expansion of the station.

Also in Oxford, the station was rebuilt by BR on the cheap in 1971, only for that building to be replaced by one more fitting for the City of Dreaming Spires in 1990.

 

[Dr Hoo]

There was a small block of six flats (three storey) on Gravelly Hill in Birmingham that was knocked down in the late 1960s after only three years because it was in the way of a tweaked design for Spaghetti Junction.

I saw them go ‘up’ and ‘down’.

 

[weepingwillowb]

Leicester City had a new main stand built, completed December 1993, at their Filbert Street ground, and the last game was played there at the end of the 2001-02 season.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Didn't Arsenal build a new stand in the 1990s that only lasted about a decade until they moved to their new stadium? I remember there being a hoarding behind one of the goals with a crowd painted on it for a season or two.

That would have been the new North Bank Stand at Highbury. Opened August 1993. Final game May 2006.

 

[ANDREW_D_WEBB]

A lot of the Royal Mail Railnet terminals had short lives. The one at Bristol Parkway springs to mind.

Parts of North Pole were demolished when GWR / Hitachi moved in. The Heathrow Express depot opposite at Old Oak also had a short life

 

[Gloster]

Wasn’t there a Traction Maintenance Depot at Temple Mills that was opened to replace Stratford but closed only a few years later: 2001-2007 perhaps. I have a memory of seeing a photo of what looked like a modern brick building being demolished.

 

[Cloud Strife]

In Jena in eastern Germany, a multi-storey car park was built in the town centre in the mid-1990s, but shortly after it was completed the authorities changed their minds and decided to demolish it and build an underground car park instead.

Do you know which one it was? I know Jena fairly well, and the only one that comes to mind is the 'Neue Mitte Jena' one.

Right now, in Poland, a lot of buildings from the 1990s are now being pulled down, including some very notable and interesting buildings architecturally. Some of them are simply no longer fit for purpose, such as shopping centres, but others are still perfectly functional. In the case of shopping centres, the first generation of malls in the early 1990s were built with rather small retail units.

 

[John Webb]

In the 1960s my old home town of Woolwich had a brand-new automated multi-storey car park built, opened, I recall by Princess Margaret. It housed about 200 cars - you drove onto a 'lift', got out of the car and it was automatically parked. But it was only 99% successful which meant every day several cars could not be retrieved without manual intervention. It was closed and knocked down within, I think. about three years after opening!

 

[D6130]

Wasn’t there a Traction Maintenance Depot at Temple Mills that was opened to replace Stratford but closed only a few years later: 2001-2007 perhaps. I have a memory of seeing a photo of what looked like a modern brick building being demolished.

The new Clifton carriage maintenance and cleaning depot at York was built in about 1987-88 to service the loco-hauled Trans-Pennine stock....but was then closed and demolished just a few years later when those services went over to DMU operation. I can't remember the exact dates, but someone on here will know. I believe that a new housing estate has since been built on the site.

 

[LUYMun]

Farnborough, Hampshire is renowned locally for having vacant new-build office buildings at every corner. Some that I can think of the top of my head include:

1. 'Concept 2000', built in 1986, adjacent to the Clockhouse roundabout. It had an all-glass exterior to it, which divided opinions, some saying that it was an eyesore. This building didn't last long as it was sold to a developer who knocked it down to build a new block of flats in 2007/8.
2. The former Guillemont military barracks near Hawley was purchased by Sun Microsystems in 1997, who wanted to build a large business park on the site. Only three of the five buildings were completed by the Millennium due to the 'dot com bubble burst' and when Sun Microsystems was bought by Oracle Corporation, the team residing there moved to Reading. It even had a little-used busway there connecting to a direct road rather than the M3 motorway junction. It continued for a while under the "Sun Park" name until it was knocked down and a new housing estate was built on it in recent years.
3. Southwood Business Park comprised of a number of office buildings built in the mid 1980s. Again, most of the space was vacant for several years and interest was taken to redevelop the site into homes.

 

[Old Yard Dog]

Nene Park, Irthlingborough (Rushden & Diamonds and later Kettering Town) and the Don Valley Stadium (athletics, Sheffield Eagles RL, Rotherham United, Sheffield FC & others) are two more examples of modern sports grounds which didn't last all that long.

I wonder how long the Reynolds Arena un Darlington will last? This is surely England's biggest sporting white elephant given Darlo fans antipathy to the place.

 

[weepingwillowb]

Nene Park, Irthlingborough (Rushden & Diamonds and later Kettering Town) and the Don Valley Stadium (athletics, Sheffield Eagles RL, Rotherham United, Sheffield FC & others) are two more examples of modern sports grounds which didn't last all that long.

I spy Avenue 'Arry

 

[Magdalia]

The Station Hotel at Cambridge was demolished in the 1980s to make way for an undistinguished office block, which has now also been demolished after only about 30 years.

Wasn’t there a Traction Maintenance Depot at Temple Mills that was opened to replace Stratford but closed only a few years later: 2001-2007 perhaps. I have a memory of seeing a photo of what looked like a modern brick building being demolished.

There must be some good examples of Modernisation Plan infrastructure that didn't last very long.

But Temple Mills only had a servicing shed (similar to Ripple Lane or Kings Cross) there was never any intention for it to replace Stratford.