Hey

First year Uni student here. I'm looking for some info on the Uni Arts Tower - either anything significant anyone can remember when it was built (being built and after), and any rumours anyone has heard about the future of the building...

Really hoping you can help - I'm on a deadline (stupid deadline)

Cheers

~BP

Hows this (http://www.skyscrapers.com/re/en/wm/bu/110836/)?

They want to stick a webcam on the top.

moves in high winds about 6inches side to side,and i was told it was built wrong way round for the wind element,they forgot about the wind at the bottom of the tower,i dont know if its still like a wind tunnel at bottom but years ago it was very bad,when it was first built it was one of the best tower blocks in uk due to the lifts being so modern,

The best storey that I heard was that when it was officially opened by the Duke of Edinburgh (?) on the ground floor, crafty students on the lower ground floor went up in the patenoster lift a couple of floors, then came back down again standing on their hands!

afaik it is now listed grade 2 and someone mentioned once that it was built over a small fault line and i can confirm that the wind tunnel is still there and i saw emtrying out a new jet fighter there t'other day :))

I remember about 1980 when all the lights were switched on in the arts tower to read

RAG 80 or something like that

Kinda like this below with a light on in each room on different floors, looked a great sight from a distance.

Anybody else remember this?

xxx xxx
x x x x
xxx x x
x x x x
xxx xxx

But it looked a lot better, more arty I guess!!

Impressive building, definitely. Looks fabulous from up by the Grindstone pub going up to Crookes - as does the whole of Sheffield.

Originally posted by mikey

Anybody else remember this?

xxx xxx
x x x x
xxx x x
x x x x
xxx xxx

But it looked a lot better, more arty I guess!!

I remember it too Mikey. They've done similar things a few times.

Nomme

I always thought it was ironic that the Architecture Department occupies the top floors of the Arts Tower!

It is reputed to be the tallest academic building in Europe (another of those Sheffield Superlatives - btw is it worth starting a thread to list them all?)

Before they made the safety mechanism more sensitive, it was everybody's duty to ride round the top and bottom of ther Paternsoter at least once!

On a Steel Press list of 50 things to do in Sheffield before you finish, having sex whilst going over the top of the paternoster lifts was one of them! Have to be damn quick though!

A girl I was dating was at sheff Uni in the early 90s. I can confirm they did the RAG9? thing with the lights then too.

The paternoster lifts were amazing. I know a lot of people who refused to jump onto them. I'm told they actually turn over at the top, but I was never brave enough to try it.

As for the wind, yep, it's still the same.

Theres been a lot of mention of them, but what are the Paternoster Lifts?

Found out now, doesn't matter.

I remember one easter someone leaving some lights on to form a giant cross.
Looked magnificent from across Sheff.

What about the big eye they did about 3 or 4 years ago? It was very spooky seeing an enormous eye staring at you - excellent :)

BTW, that skyscrapers website has a photo which makes the city centre look very pleasant:

http://www.emporis.info/en/wm/bu/?id=151027

My Dad worked for SGB (Scaffolding Company of Great Britain) in the mid Sixties and he delivered scaffolding for the Arts block. wWould be aroound 1964 0r 1965.

BTW, that skyscrapers website has a photo which makes the city centre look very pleasant:

http://www.emporis.info/en/wm/bu/?id=151027 [/B][/QUOTE]

Pitty they cant get the population correct. Nearly 100,000 out. Where could they possibly have got 431,000 from :confused:

Re the Arts Tower Construction.

Before the Arts Tower was built, there was a road which ran from the junction of Winter Street and Bolsover Street at the top of Weston Street which ran where the Arts Tower is today, to the top of Houndsfield Road, the trams from Town came up Houndsfield Road and went left for Crookes or straight across for Walkley.
There was a Picture House on the corner where the New Chemistry Block is, I think it was called the Scala ???.
The name of the road where the walkley trams went I have forgot, there was also some very large houses where the Arts Tower Car park is, when the Walkley trams route was changed to the 95 bus route the bus went straight down Bolsover street to what was a crossroads to Upper Hanover Street and Brook Hill, No Netherthorpe Road.
The building was opened in 1965 but I cannot remember when construction started would say about 1963.
I did in fact work on Gell Street from 1963 - 1969 at which time I worked at the Chemistry Building so I remember it quite well.

Regards John.m

I don't know about huge eyes and crosses but there was regular game at Sorby Hall in the late 80s spelling 4 letter words with the lights across the building. What good use we made of our time as students.

The paternoster doesn't turn over at the top, honestly! It just all goes a bit dark. We did discover a couple of years ago that if you do go round the top, or the bottom, then the lift tends to stop for a couple of minutes, but it usually takes a couple of seconds to respond, so if you position yourself carefully you can get out and leave your mates in the next cubicle stuck in the dark. Not big, or clever, but it amused us for a while. (And it doesn't usually stick for very long, honest!)

When there is a big queue for the paternoster on the ground floor the more cunning students get in the one going down and go round the bottom (therefore jumping the queue), pa ha ha

nb - I have never doing this being an ex science student

i do that all the time, the other fun part is when you jump into the paternoster lift and end slammed into the back wall while the queue stares at you and laughs!

its a skill that lift getting on and of it!

i remember in first year having a lecture on the top floor within the architecture department and watching sheffield sway past me, the lecturer had to close the curtains because we were all so transfixed by that rather than the lecture!

might sound a bit daft but can you please explain to me what is a wind tunnel and what/why it has been caused? cheers

The buildings are arranged such that they catch any draught and funnel it into a channel. Hey presto - a wind tunnel!

(like the one they test car aerodynamics in, but without the fan)

Originally posted by Garry Bond
My Dad worked for SGB (Scaffolding Company of Great Britain) in the mid Sixties and he delivered scaffolding for the Arts block. wWould be aroound 1964 0r 1965.
I've a book published by the Council in 1969 which shows a new looking Arts Tower and Library, so that would be about right .

As someone who started out in the University by working in the Arts Tower I can tell
you various things about it. The inscription on the marble facing of the lift shaft tells
you it was opened by the Queen Mum in 1966, so completion in 1965 sounds
plausible. There was indeed a cinema facing onto Western Bank, it was demolished in
1970 and I got some photos of it (it was sort of semi-classical, in grey terracotta).
There certainly is a wind tunnel between the tower and the Library (which itself was
the first purpose-built university library after the war, opened by old T S Eliot himself
in 1957). Despite being a big building, many of the staff offices were barely big
enough to swing a kitten, let alone a full-grown cat. At one time there was a sort of
fountain at the base of the tower, with a depression to hold water--all that happened of
course was that people got sprayed in high winds, and the pool got filled up with
rubbish, so that was (wisely) removed. One time when there was a fire drill we were
told that in the event of a real fire noone above floor 13 would have survived, anyway
the design is stupid because the stairwells on each side would just act as giant funnels
to take the fire up. One time the wind pressure inside the building was so high that it
actually blew one of the large ground floor window panes out!

The paternoster lift, by the way, is so called after the string of prayer beads which
monks used to employ to say the Our Father prayer to; the name was first applied to
the chain of buckets used in earlier times to drain water out of mines, and was then
transferred to this kind of lift. There is a similar one in Newcastle which has claimed
one fatal accident (stupid person trying to push a trolley onto it and got jammed and crushed as a result).

I was rather flabbergasted when told the building had been listed, but then I suppose I'm just a philistine and it probably does represent a good example of 60s brutalist architecture (I don't mind Centre Point in London, of the same era, that has a bit more going for it). Actually the building has a twin, a bank in London built in exactly the same way, except that the entrance is on the narrow side rather than the wider one.

Interestingly, the building has been so much pullled around inside with various modifications over the years that internally it is far removed from its original form--but when the listed Library was refurbished they were told they couldn't remove the (wornout, ghastly old) original counters on the first floor as they were part of the listing. Instead new counters had to be built over them, retaining the old ones encased inside. Now that does seem to me to be a bit of idiocy.

Work directly opposite this slab of a building, approx. 80 yards. Can see it as I write this. Built 1966. & has remained an eyesore ever since. Foul structure.

END DEBATE: I can conclusively confirm, there is definitely not enough time to shag whilst going over the top of the paternoster lift. Although there's never anyone on the top 5 floors or so we didn't really want to risk it.


Is paternoster row named after it?

What is at the top by the way?
I have wanted to go up there and take some pictures from the top, do you think this would be allowed

when an apprentice at the uni I was asked to try out the cradle that goes over the top of the building and down the outside.
As the cradle was lifted one second you have about 15feet of air between you and the ground the next 250 feet. Talk about brick it. I loudly asked to be allowed out (and was) This was in 1965 as the building was completed and handed over to the uni.

They have a big daffodil (sp?) made out of different coloured paper in the windows at the moment, similar to what they had last year, looks great!

As a student most of us loathe the arts tower, its a pain to get to/in and most of the rooms are either freezing cold or boiling hot. Plus the fact that you get blown over walking up to the door....

I`m a porter at the uni and the other year they were having a transmitter or summat put on the roof of the arts tower one sunday. They hired a helicopter to do the lifting. You can imagine how windy it got around the bottom. After watching for about an hour i returned to my building with eyes full of grit looking like a panda. BTW i always wondered what happened at the top of the paternoster. I`ve been here 15 years and only rode it twice.