The Swan Arcade was a four-storey building located between Market Street and Broadway, Bradford, England and stood opposite the Wool Exchange.
It was opened in 1880 by the Mayor of Bradford and local MP Angus Holden, and named after the White Swan Inn, which had previously stood on the same site.
The original lift, or chain of cages [driven by a gas engine], never stopped running in business hours but it went so slowly that it was easy to step in or out as it reached a floor level, and no attendant was needed.
[2] In 1954 the Arndale Property Trust Ltd of Wakefield, an investment company which specialised in the development of central shopping and office sites, with extensive holdings in the North and Midlands, privately bought the Swan Arcade in for a reported sum of between £225,000–£250,000 – although the exact figure was never disclosed.
Just as Swan Arcade, when it was new, was described as being 50 years ahead of its time, so the Bradford Telegraph and Argus reported that its replacement, according to one of the architects who designed it, was "structurally the most advanced building to be constructed in the United Kingdom".
In the first days of March 1962, the last shops closed, the demolition workers moved in and Bradford’s only arcade was reduced to rubble, to be “replaced by a more efficient building to marry with the new city centre.” The Hodkinson and Co/Taylor and Parsons gates were sold off to a wealthy businessman.
"There are people today amassing stupendous fortunes by systematically destroying our historic centres," raged architectural writer James Lees-Milne, in 1964.
"Eventually, all the buildings of the area – good, bad and indifferent – are replaced with chain stores, supermarkets and blocks of flats devoid of all distinction, and all looking alike.”