Toast the Rack

BUILDINGTOAST RACKMANCHESTER

4/7/20241 min read

I must admit I have a better picture of the building, it's just that when I looked that one, it was blurred, and when I say better, I mean that the picture looked more aesthetically pleasing, though the blur (not sure how that happened) detracted from it.

For those of you in Manchester you'll recognize this building as the Toast Rack which was a former Manchester Polytechnic building and now owned by a developer who put it back on sale as of last year (2023).

It weird, for all of my life I had heard of the Toast Rack, but never knew where it was, and finally when I saw it I realized that I lived not to far from it in Victoria Park when I just started working.

It's a pity that it is not being used and has been abandoned since 2014, though I'm sure it's one of those buildings that people have a love/hate for. Concrete can be so divisive. It also looks a little municipal, wo that doesn't help. Still I always love this sort of stuff, I have a picture of Ossington Court in Northern Moor, which reminds me of this. That got torn down after the plans fell through, I remember taking a photo of it (I'm not sure what the attraction of it was for me) and a kid in the street asked my why I was taking a picture of it, when I explained he said that the council was "mad at it" so they were going to pull it down.

The Toast Rack is Grade II listed so I'm not sure whether the council can tear it down even if they are mad at it, but I'm not sure how these things work.