Of Newcastle 50 years ago
THESE striking images were captured by photographer Laszlo Torday. Torday took many hundreds of pictures, providing a vivid glimpse into Newcastle’s mid-20th century past.
The photographs here show the likes of Northumberland Street, Grey Street, New Bridge Street, Pudding Chare and the Side as they were five decades ago.
They are published courtesy of Newcastle Libraries.
Laszlo Torday arrived on Tyneside from Hungary in 1940, and he eventually moved to Jesmond.
Born in 1890, he was a chemical engineer and later an industrialist, as well as a keen amateur photographer. He died in 1975.
Torday’s photographs, taken in the 1960s and 1970s, reflect his interest in the streets and people of Newcastle, especially of central Newcastle and the suburbs of Heaton and Jesmond.
Not only were the city’s buildings and landmarks important to the roving photographer, so were the Tyneside people who were out and about living their lives 50 years ago.
The Torday collection was bought from a local dealer and is made up of 100 photograph albums of black and white prints, plus 16 boxes of colour transparencies.
Copies of some of his work have been incorporated into the main collection of photographs in Newcastle City Library’s heritage section, but until recently the majority have remained in their original albums.
The opportunity for the library to digitise images from the collection means that they can now be enjoyed by a wider audience.
The library is also keen to find out more about them. If you recognise anyone in the images, please let them know via their Flickr pages.
Sarah Mulligan, of Newcastle Libraries, said: “Lazslo Torday’s work is one of the highlights of the library’s Local Studies photograph collection. The collection consists of more than over 80,000 photographs, prints and postcards, representing the social, recreational and working lives of the region from the birth of photography in the 1850s, to the present day.”
■■More than 7,000 images can be found on Flickr: www.flickr.com/ photos/newcastlelibraries/