Victorian Railway Viaduct and Beetham Tower, Manchester

25 September 2019 · Manchester

Deansgate's Gothic railway viaduct does two things at once: it carries trains over a Victorian street and frames a view that compresses a century and a half of Manchester into a single arch. The ornamental crenellation, the cross motif cast into the ironwork, the receding second arch — all of it layered against the Beetham Tower rising behind under a heavy overcast sky. Old infrastructure and new skyline sharing the same frame, each making the other stranger.