Having spent the last few weeks looking at various Manchester City Centre locations in “Then & Now”, this week we do the same although it’s a location which has seen the advent of trams more recently than others.
This is Exchange Square which is now on the route on the Second City Crossing, which would fully open in February 2017 although the stop here opened in 2015 for trams running from the Rochdale line. With the ever increasing number of routes which needed to run across the city this was needed to provide enough capacity for trams.
This before photo is from 2014 and shows the area before significant construction work had taken place although we can see in the distance evidence that it is underway. In the background is the Corn Exchange which was originally built in 1903 but was severely damaged in the IRA bomb of 1996. It was subsequently redeveloped in both 2000 and 2015 and is now home to a food outlet and apartment hotel.
26th February 2024 and we now have a tramstop which at this time was as far as trams could go from East Didsbury because of track problems at Victoria. The renovation of the Corn Exchange can be seen on the left and the area has been more pedestrianized than it was. (Both Photographs by Keith Chadbourne)