Former Tramways Power Station And Offices

Former Tramways Power Station and Offices

This former corporation tramways offices and power station, now in use as transport offices and garage, was built in 1901 to designs by B.F. Simpson. The complex comprises an office building on the corner with Trafalgar Street, a high-bay power station to the right, and a yard wall with gates to the north, all enclosed within wrought iron and wood gates hung from an ashlar gateway.

The office section has a basement and four storeys, organised as a single bay of three sections with a distinctive three-bay rounded corner. The power station section is a single high storey with shallow basement extending for fifteen bays. Both are constructed in free style with ashlar to the ground floor and basement of the office block, and brick with ashlar dressings to the upper storeys and across the power station. The roofs are Welsh slate with copper turrets and ashlar coping.

The office entrance at the left of the curved corner features a moulded surround with segmental head to double panelled doors. Tall, well-cut letters spelling 'OFFICE' fill the spandrels. Above, a tall overlight has radiating stone glazing bars and a round head, with cartouches carved on corbels of long brackets that support a prominent dripmould. Paired basement windows contain many small lights, while ground floor windows have 4 x 4 square lights divided by stone mullions and transoms. The first floor windows sit within wide segmental arches with ashlar alternate quoins and voussoirs, with wood mullions and transoms. Paired upper windows follow similar treatment with square heads, those on the second floor resting on sill strings and those on the third floor simpler but with bracketed sills. Top windows have keys supporting an ashlar entablature with gutter cornice.

The side bays of the curved corner feature stone oriels rising through the second and third floors, terminating in tapered octagonal turrets decorated with fishscale work and topped with disc-and-dome roofs bearing ball and spear finials. Between the turrets, a tall ashlar pyramid rises from the eaves bearing the carved arms of the Corporation of Newcastle. Above the arms, the roof continues in slate with copper lucames styled after late medieval halls of the Low Countries, featuring projecting prow roofs and tapered finials. A similar roof covers the right bay to Melbourne Street, rising behind a high parapet. The coping is elaborately shaped to this and to the gable at the left return.

The former power station section to the right tapers as the street rises. At ground level, low segmental heads cover seven basement lights. A tall, wide ashlar door in the third bay from the right features long, paired curved brackets springing from a block at sill level and supporting a deep baroque hoodmould. Within this surround, a segmental head over a renewed vehicle door carries carved spandrels. The overlight has stone glazing bars radiating from a richly carved panel, with the head of the arch displaying a well-cut inscription in art nouveau letters reading 'NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE CORPORATION TRAMWAYS' in moulded surround. Tall round-headed windows have glazing bars radiating to round heads, with opening lights in the lowest section set upon sloping sills. Moulded brick surrounds feature ashlar bands that overlap and continue from alternate jambs and side keys; top keys project into the brickwork. A deep ashlar eaves fascia sits below a bracketed gutter cornice, with five moulded rainwater hoppers positioned below the fascia.

The tall yard wall on the left return to Trafalgar Street adjoins the office building and features a tall, deeply chamfered vehicle entrance with elaborate ashlar piers and gabled arch. The full-height wood gates have art nouveau scrolled wrought iron top panels.

The interior of the offices shows richly glazed walls, partly covered in late twentieth-century boarded cladding, above a long flight of steps descending to ground floor level. The entrance overlight contains well-painted stained glass depicting in yellow stain the first horse-drawn trams of the 1870s and the electric trams of 1901, with deep colours applied to symbolic figures positioned over the central arms of the Corporation. The stairwell features a stone or concrete dogleg stair with art nouveau wrought iron balustrade and moulded wood handrail curling out to ground floor level. The power station interior shows a full-length iron gallery at the rear and turned balusters to a viewing gallery at the offices end. A full-length gantry mounted on free-standing pierced H-girders supports a crane for lifting turbines.