(click for enlarged view)
In response to government legislation, Newcastle City Council produced and published a 'Development Plan' in June 1954. It provided a blueprint for the authority's 20-year ambitions for the city centre and its suburbs. Alongside the dozen or so pages of (admittedly very sketchy) ideas, were two large fold-out maps of the city, with bits shaded / coloured in to give us all a rough idea as to what would happen and when. Many of the plans never reached fruition, but a good deal did.
I only know this because today I bought a copy of the booklet & plans in question from a second-hand bookshop for £15 (as you may know, I am a sucker for such offerings). As much as I'd like to share the whole thing with you, it is simply not practically possible - but above is an image from the same of the proposed new 'town hall' (civic centre), imagined well over a decade before the place was eventually opened. It is remarkably similar to the final, finished structure - though the famous circular council chamber and lantern tower which we are familiar with today are missing from the artist's impression. The civic centre itself was built during 1960-67 and formally opened in 1968.
As for an old West-Ender like me, I found it interesting to note that they also had in mind a 'Western By-pass' to skirt the suburbs much as the current trunk road does. Even as early as the 1940s/50s a ribbon of land was being reserved for this purpose ... but it wasn't actually built until 1990! When it was finally opened, it at once became the new course of the A1 (taking over from the Tyne Tunnel route).
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