Royal Arcade, Newcastle upon Tyne

In the 1820s, a group of local businessmen decided to commission a building which was originally intended to serve as a corn exchange. The site they selected was at the north end of the Tyne Bridge. Work on the building, by then intended to serve as a shopping mall, started in 1830. It was designed by John Dobson in the Greek Revival style, built by Richard Grainger in ashlar stone and was completed in 1832. The layout consisted of two rectangular blocks, the front block facing Pilgrim Street and the rear block facing Manor Chare, connected by a narrow block containing the arcade itself. The design of the front block involved a symmetrical main frontage of nine bays facing onto Pilgrim…