Birmingham New Street Station: lnwrbns_str1880

A coloured postcard looking from Stephenson Place showing the entrance to the private road in front of the Queen's & North Western Hotel. The full name of the hotel Queen's & North Western Hotel is seen above the third storey in gilt lettering and in this case also on the postcard. The original photograph on which this postcard was based is dated 15th August 1914 some twenty years after the earlier photograph and shows the wording to the offices on the right changed to Tourist and Excursion Office and with all reference to H Gaze & Son being removed. The entrance to the hotel on the left has also since acquired a more ornate canopy roof with flowers on top.

The hand-coloured postcard does provide some indication of the colouring of the station although as photographs produced as postcards were frequently doctored to make them more attractive to a buyer their accuracy needs to be heavily qualified. John Boynton noted in his book A Century of Railways - Part One that a group of boys were loitering on the left of this photograph in the black and white version. Whilst a copy of the said photograph can be seen in image in 'lnwrbns_str1864' it has been cropped but the full version including the boys can be seen in Richard's second volume on New Street on pages 62 and 63.

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