We step out 50 years ago on Newcastle's Pilgrim Street.
On the left, just out of shot in our 1971 photograph, is Worswick Street (home to the recently demolished bus station) - and on the right is Shakespeare Street.
The area, looking South towards the Tyne Bridge, has undergone much flux over the last 100 years or so.
READ MORE: The Tyne pedestrian and cycle tunnel 30 years ago - in photographs
There was wholesale change during the construction of the Tyne Bridge. Mass demolition took place on both sides of the river from 1924 as the ground was cleared for the new bridge’s supports. There is no record of where people from the poor housing were displaced to.
The 1960s marked the end of the grand Royal Arcade. Built in 1831 by Richard Grainger, it became home to shops, banks, offices, a post office, an auction room, and steam and vapour baths. With its domes and stone columns, the building was hailed as the finest example of its kind in the country.
But, over time, it was destined to become Grainger’s least successful venture, being seen as too far off the beaten retail track from popular Grainger Street and Northumberland Street.
It was replaced by the multi-storey Swan House office block (today it's called 55° North and is home to executive flats), built as an intended new gateway to a modern, forward-thinking Newcastle.
In 1975, cars and lorries on the newly opened Central Motorway began roaring around a roundabout underneath Swan House, as traffic was thankfully diverted away from the main A1 Pilgrim Street/Northumberland Street route through the city centre.
And today, a much-needed revamp on down-at-heel sections of Pilgrim Street is underway.
Former buildings on the street, as well as on Worswick Street and Carliol Square, will be replaced by new office space, restaurants, cafes, bars, a pavilion and a car park.
The 1960s-built Bank of England at the bottom of Pilgrim Street was demolished in 2012, and construction work on the new 14-storey Bank House development is now well-advanced.
Elsewhere on the street, plans were lodged earlier this year to turn the city centre’s former fire station into a 5-star boutique hotel with a restaurant, bar and new publicly accessible courtyard 'where people can meet and relax'.
And only last week, ChronicleLive reported how by 2027, HMRC intends to move more than 9,000 staff into an office block which will take shape on the former Odeon cinema site, currently home to Stack Newcastle.
It's a far cry from the earliest days of the street which is thought to be named after the religious pilgrims who flocked through the former Pilgrim Gate on their way to the shrine of Our Lady at Jesmond. Another theory is that the pilgrims might well have been on their way to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.
For centuries, Pilgrim Street was one of two main routes people would take travelling North through the old town after crossing the Tyne (where the Swing Bridge is today) - the other being via Side, Groat Market, Newgate Street, and Sidgate (later renamed Percy Street).
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