Phill Rawlins Online - Manchester aviation and transport photography

Around Manchester

A walk around the city and its waterfront: the Imperial War Museum North, the Arndale Tower, Urbis, the Cathedral and the pedestrianised city centre.

Landmarks around the city, mostly a short walk apart in the centre and along the Quays. Click any photograph for a larger view.

The Imperial War Museum North

Daniel Libeskind’s building at Trafford Wharf, on the opposite bank of the Ship Canal from Salford Quays.

The Imperial War Museum North sign and the museum’s angled aluminium cladding
The museum sign. The words “war shapes lives” on the building’s cladding, itself shaped as fragments of a shattered globe.
The exterior of the Imperial War Museum North at Trafford Wharf
The Imperial War Museum North. Opened in July 2002, the first museum in the country to deal exclusively with the impact of conflict on people’s lives.

The city centre

Manchester city centre on a summer afternoon, with the pedestrianised square and fountains
The city centre. The pedestrianised area on a summer afternoon, in the streets rebuilt after the 1996 bomb. Grass, fountains and planting replaced what had been a traffic route.
Urbis and the Arndale Tower at night with floodlit fountains in the foreground
Urbis and the Arndale Tower after dark. The Arndale Tower with its illuminated rooftop sign, the Urbis glass wedge alongside, and the floodlit columns and fountains of the square in front. Also on the Manchester at Night page.
A mirrored, altered photograph of the Arndale Tower in Manchester
The Arndale Tower, mirrored. One of the altered images from the original site: the tower reflected along its own axis to make a symmetrical building that does not exist.
Manchester Cathedral, the CIS Tower and Urbis seen together at dusk
Cathedral, CIS Tower and Urbis. Four hundred years of the city’s architecture in one frame, from the medieval collegiate church to the 1962 CIS Tower. Also on the Manchester at Night page.

Missing from this page. The original page also carried two views of the Lowry Centre, the Centenary Bridge in Trafford Park, Allied Mills, Oxford Road station with the G-MEX behind it, the Key 103 airship during the Commonwealth Games, and rush hour traffic on the M62. Those files were not captured by the Internet Archive. The Lowry Centre and Centenary Bridge are described and illustrated on the Salford Quays page.

About this page

This page was written in August 2004 and served a 404 message for most of its life: it was linked from the gallery index but never finished before the original server closed. It has now been given the content its title promised, using the photographs that survive in the archive.

The two Imperial War Museum North photographs are a good example of what an enthusiast with a camera can record that a picture library would not bother with. The building has been photographed exhaustively from the air and from the canal; the lettering on its cladding, and the way the low sun picks it out, much less so.

Where to go next

The Salford Quays page covers the waterfront where the Imperial War Museum North stands. The Changing Manchester page follows what happened to surrounding streets, and the Manchester at Night page returns to the same landmarks after dark.