Emerson Chambers (1903)
Architects: Simpson, Lawson and Rayne
Location: Blackett Street. Status: Listed Grade II.
Emerson Chambers is - and deserves to be - one of the best known and best loved buildings of Newcastle. It is all the things we dream a building should be - charming, witty and inventive. Put this building together with Benjamin Simpson's other Newcastle creations - Half Moon Chambers, 1 Mosley Street, the Tramways Depot, the shop front at No. 50 Dean Street and possibly Reid's the Jewellers in Blackett Street - then we have a body of such inventive and individual work as to justify celebrating Simpson as Newcastle's Macintosh. It is not a building to describe, but one to enjoy and wonder at. It replaced an 1821 Presbyterian Church known as the "Scotch Church".
