Gateshead

Gateshead is a town in North-East England on the southern bank of the River Tyne, opposite Newcastle upon Tyne, which covers the north bank. It is the main settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead. Gateshead and Newcastle are linked by a total of seven bridges.

Gateshead is part of the postal county of Tyne and Wear and historically within the traditional County of Durham.

Economy

 Retail

Gateshead is the location of the MetroCentre, which regained its place as the largest shopping centre in Europe when the new red mall opened in October 2004. Gateshead is also the location of the Team Valley Trading Estate, initially the largest and still one of the largest purpose built commercial estates in the United Kingdom.

 Architecture

Having been overshadowed by its near neighbour, Newcastle upon Tyne for many years, Gateshead has recently seen a cultural resurgence. Building on the success of the MetroCentre and the International Stadium, the council has more recently invested in riverside redevelopments that include the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, erected in 2001. The bridge won the James Stirling Prize for Architecture in 2002.

The BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art has been established in a converted flour mill. The Sage Gateshead, a Norman Foster-designed venue for music and the performing arts opened on 17 December 2004. The Brutalist Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park still dominates the town centre. A product of attempts to regenerate the area in the 1960s is largely derelict but has gained an iconic status due to its appearance in the film Get Carter. Dr Johnson passing through with James Boswell described it as "a dirty little back lane out of Newcastle" while JB Priestley, writing in his "An English Journey" (1934) said that "no true civilisation could have produced such a town", adding that it appeared to have been designed "by an enemy of the human race".

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Gateshead ".