Cruddas Park

A 1960s new vision

Cruddas Park's high-rise towers went up in the 1960s as part of Newcastle's sweeping post-war redevelopment programme, led by the city's controversial and ambitious planning boss T. Dan Smith, who spoke of remaking Newcastle as a "Brasilia of the North." The towers replaced older terraced streets condemned as slums, part of the same wave of change that produced the very different, more community-led Byker Wall a few years later on the other side of the city.