City centre bar is another ‘lost’ treasure
DOUGLAS HOTEL DEMOLISHED 50 YEARS AGO
YOU might have seen the recent Chronicle story about plans for a new, very different Newcastle micropub.
Called The Waypoint, it would be based in the old travel shop at Monument Metro station.
If plans are approved, it could open in early 2019 and would probably be the first underground station pub in the country.
It brings to mind another longgone subterranean Toon bar called the Geordie Pride.
But first, what about the grand old building which preceded it, standing on the same site for nearly 100 years before the bulldozers went to work in the late 1960s?
The Douglas Hotel is another lost Victorian architectural treasure. It was built in 1877 at a time when Newcastle was asserting itself as a major industrial and commercial powerhouse.
It was designed by Tynesidebased architect John Edward Watson and was opened as a 50-bedroom hotel.
It stood on the corner of Grainger Street and Neville Street and was one of Newcastle’s plushest places to stay.
It was a popular haunt of businessmen, and visitors to the city would drop in for a tipple after pulling into the Central Station, just over the road.
Once described as “the most perfect example of a Victorian bar in Britain”, it had an impressive glass-panelled ceiling, pre-Raphaelite paintings, and crafted wooden panels made from American walnut.
In what today seems like an act of mindless vandalism, this fine building was demolished in 1968.
It made way for a new office block called Douglas House, opened in 1971 and later renamed Baron House. Beneath was constructed a sprawling 8,000 square-feet underground drinking hole called the Geordie Pride.
It was advertised as “the region’s only walkabout pub”. It featured a reproduction of a Victorian Street, and was divided up into a number of themed areas.
In one area, the Douglas Hotel buffet of a century earlier was replicated, 12 feet below where the real thing once stood.
The Geordie Pride lasted just 10 years, closing in 1981.
Today, the ground floor of the block is occupied by Slater’s Menswear, and a pizza restaurant called The Neopolitan.