3: Anita Street

Turn right. Head through the concrete bollards.

Anita Street. Breathe it in.

Many a Mancunians favourite two rows of terraced housing.

This street was built to save this area.

And there in front of you.

“The residents & staff welcome you to Victoria Square,

Manchester’s first purpose built housing.”

A monument of a radical council thinking differently.

The buildings before these, the back to back’s, set in dark, filthy networks

of poorly constructed housing, with their walls “one brick thick” that would

fall down after 40 years. A symbol of this area’s dark history.

Not these beauties. They’re solid. Standing proud for over 120 years.

The name’s changed mind. Sanitary street. A few letters dropped off either

side and Anita was born, and forever she’ll be an icon.

I am the matching black doors.

I am bricks in every shade of red.

I am symmetry.

I am the best street I ever lived on, why did I ever move.

I am Ancoats people past and present, salt of the earth that look after one

another.

I am some of the first social housing in this country.

Go right to the end, through the bollards and turn right.