Nostalgia: It's been a week of demolition in Edinburgh, so we look at the city's ever-changing face

Published on Saturday 14 March 2009 10:42

THE face of Edinburgh seems to be ever changing. The demolition of 1960s homes in Muirhouse and the announcement of plans to bulldoze another scheme, Fort House in Leith, show how rarely things stand still.

Other changes are to follow, as the council looks to build more modern and cost-efficient housing but such large-scale changes are, of course, nothing new.

Leith Street has seen more than most in recent times, with the old shops and flats bulldozed in 1969 to make way for the St James Centre.

Just four years later, the demolition crews returned to raze more homes to make way for further development. The land featured in our photograph is now the multi-storey car park.

Forty years on, the St James Centre is about to be demolished again, to make way for an 850 million replacement, after becoming one of the city's most notorious eyesores.

The bulldozers returned to the east end of the city centre in 1982, this time to make way for Princes Mall, on the corner of Waverley Bridge and Princes Street.

One of the last stages of the demolition involved taking down the ornate Victorian iron arches of the old Waverley Market, which had stood since March 1, 1869.

The market had closed down in November 1972, ten years before the demolition, and after the new multi-million-pound shopping centre was built, one of the original arches was presented to the old Royal Scottish Museum.

Along Princes Street, the shops on the corner of Frederick Street, where the USC clothes store stands today, was the scene of another major demolition.

The Palace Hotel which stood there had to be torn down following a huge fire in June 1991 which destroyed the seven-storey building.

Further back along the street, the classic 1960s-style of the British Home Stores building is an obvious giveaway to its not-so-distant past.

The North Mercantile and Marine Insurance company occupied the building which was demolished in 1966 to make way for the department store.

Other local landmarks to have been taken down included the old railway bridge over the main road at Bonnington Toll, in 1968. The expansion of Edinburgh University's city centre campus also saw changes on the Southside in the late 1960s. Our photograph shows tenements on Marshall Street and Potterrow being pulled down.