Memory is a great trickster. Ask me for one of my most endearing visual memories of Halifax in the 1960s and 70s and I will tell you about the 14 foot high plastic bowling pin that used to grace the top of the Halifax Bowl at the junction of Broad Street and Orange Street. I might even go on to eulogise the oversized ten-pin - or “plastic skittle” as it was affectionately known - as one of the lasting icons of the town, up there with Mr Wainhouse and his tower, or Mr Burdock and his way. But, I would be wrong: the plastic pin had only a fleeting existence and was in place for just one year, before being unceremoniously taken down and carried away to obscurity. During its short life, however, it managed to create a monumental storm. One local Councillor called it “a monstrosity, empty and shallow, representing everything that was not wanted for Halifax”. Thousands of Halifax people disagreed and signed a petition to save it, and even the Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was called on to intervene.
Halifax Bowl was part of the ten-pin bowling boom of the early 1960s. The first ten-pin bowling alley came to Britain from America in 1960, and by 1964 there were over 100 gleaming new bowling alleys in towns across the country. Halifax’s contribution to this craze was opened in February 1964 by the Coronation Street actress Pat Phoenix, and boasted 28 bowling lanes in addition to its giant plastic bowling pin. Local councillors, concerned that such a “shabby totem of an exclamation mark” might cast a cultural shadow over their neighbouring council chamber, granted permission for it to remain in place for just six months, and at the end of that period refused to give it a stay of execution.
The bowling alley itself did survive the removal of its “plastic skittle”, but not by long. By the end of the 1960s, the building had become a supermarket and that was later swept away when the Broad Street Plaza was constructed. Little remains of the old Halifax Bowl other than a few faded photographs and some even more faded memories.
I think I agree with some of the townspeople- sitting in sight of that clock tower, it does sort of cheapen the neighborhood!
ReplyDeleteYears ago my daughter lived across from a church with a hugh parking lot. They built a gigantic hand that was supposed to represent human trafficing. It was there for several years.
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