Phil Gyford

Bishopsgate Goods Yard is currently being demolished to make way for the East London Line extension, although I can’t recall now whether the project is stalled or not. Either way, demolition looks pretty complete, and although you can’t see much from the street, an aerial view gives you a better perspective of the sea of bricks now filling the space between the walls. (I took the photos a month ago, although it’s pretty much the same now.)

Incidentally, whenever I cycle west down Bethnal Green Road, approaching the Goods Yard in the sun, I feel like I’m an an American city. It’s something to do with being in a slightly industrial but “up and coming” area, looking across a vast space filled with nothing but building work (or, in this case, demolition) towards glinting towers filled with money. It’s how I imagine things looked in San Francisco while building the new baseball stadium, or in Houston while their clutch of stadiums were built. For some reason it makes me happy.