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Then and Now: Victoria Station

THEN: Victoria Station in 1963

The once-thriving florists and adjoining Chinese restaurant opposite have given way to a rather sad vacant lot, fronted by an advertising hoarding.

And the corner site once occupied by Lloyds Bank carries a "To Let" sign.

The famous façade of Manchester's historic Victoria Station, however, is virtually unchanged from the archive photo of 1963 to that of the present day.

Even the Victorian clock shows a difference of less than seven hours between "Then" and "Now".

NOW: Not much has changed

Originally a small single-storey platform building opened on Hunts Bank in 1844 to serve the Manchester and Leeds trans-Pennine railway, the station became the starting point for journeys not only in Lancashire and Yorkshire, but across the Irish Sea, and from the east coast to the Continent.

It suffered declining fortunes in the 1980s when all long-distance services were re-routed into Piccadilly Station.

But it bounced back from the sidelines by becoming the main terminus for what is now the M.E.N. Arena, and benefiting from becoming a key link in the city's Metrolink tram system.

The image is part of a collection of 77,000 pictures chronicling the changing face of Manchester over the past 250 years, which are stored on an easy-to-use computer system at the city's Central Library.

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