The Streets of Our City: Manchester Town Hall Photographers’ Collection

The Town Hall Photographers’ Collection is a large photographic collection held in Archives+ Central Library, ranging in date from 1956 to 2007. The collection consists of tens of thousands of images, covering the varied areas of work of Manchester Corporation and latterly, Manchester City Council. The photographs were taken by staff photographers, who were tasked to document the work of the Corporation/Council departments and in doing so, captured many aspects of Manchester life and history, including significant changes to the Manchester landscape. The collection includes many different formats from glass negatives, to slides, prints, CDs and even a couple of cine films. What is especially exciting is that the majority of these images have never before been available in a digital format and therefore have only ever been seen by a handful of people. A team of dedicated staff, volunteers and students from Bridge College, Loreto College, Manchester College and Pure Innovations are currently working on the systematic digitisation of the negatives held within the collection. This exhibition represents the result of their work to date.

Do you recognise any of the streets or buildings? Would you like to share a memory you have of visiting somewhere in one of the images? We have limited information about these images and welcome your input to complete the information about each image.  When visiting the exhibition, please use the book displayed at the beginning of the exhibition to record your memories and knowledge.

We are building a new images website. Could you take five minutes to tell us what our local image collection means to you and what features would you like to see on the new site? https://smartsurvey.co.uk/s/ERELJ7/

This exhibition is free, but please consider making a donation to support our Library Live programme if you can, either online or at one of our cash or contactless donation boxes in Central Library