Architect with grand plans for a city of beauty and wellbeing

TONY HENDERSON reflects on an honour for a man who had high ambitions for Newcastle

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> This image and inset, below, the designs for the landmark entrance building to Newcastle from the Tyne Bridge, by Robert Burns Dick

(Robert Burns Dick)

HE was an architect with monumental plans for Newcastle and who designed a sweep of prominent buildings and structures on Tyneside.

Robert Burns Dick, who, as we revealed last week, has just been honoured with a plaque, certainly left his mark with creations ranging from the Spanish City at Whitley Bay and Berwick police station, to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle.

But his legacy could have been even greater if two of his most ambitious schemes had come to fruition.

He envisaged a grand entrance into Newcastle for people and traffic arriving via the then new Tyne Bridge.

Having designed the towers of the bridge, he cast his eyes towards the foot of Pilgrim Street, with a vision for a gigantic triumphal entrance arch complex that doubled as a civic centre.

This was no pie in the sky dreaming from an architect whose work included the Pilgrim Street Fire Station, Market Street police station and courts and the neo-Jacobean students union building gateway to Newcastle University.

He was a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a president of the Northern Architectural Association.

Newcastle upon Tyne