Contrast

Lots of Mancunians will have memories of the Free Trade Hall. Victoria Wood wrote "That Day We Sang" about that kind of memory (on at the Royal Exchange, then a TV adaptation last Christmas - Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton really good). My last memory was a Halle concert, Victoria Mullova playing the violin in an alarmingly see through skirt.

With the opening of the Bridgewater Hall, with its great acoustic, the Free Trade Hall was deemed redundant. So it has gone. But the frontage is retained as part of the Radisson Hotel - providing a great contrast, civic pride of yesteryear combined with the modern commercialism of now.