Birmingham Gay Village

Hurst Street is a street located along the edge of the Chinese Quarter of Birmingham, England.The Birmingham Back to Backs, a complex of four restored houses, extends from Hurst Street to Inge Street. They are the last surviving example of this nineteenth-century construction type in the city. Restored by the Birmingham Conservation Trust, since July 2004, they are now a museum operated by the National Trust.A number of architectural details survive in the buildings on Hurst Street, as old as lintels of 1790s design and including an automobile showroom and a large Fisher & Ludlow automobile factory from the 1930s.In the mid-nineteenth century, Hurst Street was the centre of Birmingham's Jewish community, with most Jewish immigrants to Birmingham living in slums around Hurst Street. The Hebrew National School was replaced by a new building on Hurst Street in 1843. Courses for 85 boys included Hebrew and Hebrew literature in addition to the customary school curriculum. The school relocated and the building was demolished in 1856. The Unitarian Association for the Midland Counties (later the Birmingham Unitarian Domestic Mission Society) built a chapel known as the Hurst Street Domestic Mission on Hurst Street in 1844. It had schoolrooms beneath the chapel, and additional schoolrooms behind the chapel were added later. Its large central room became known as the People's Hall, where free lectures were held. The school's efforts to educate the city's poorest children were praised by the Inspector of Schools in the 1850s.Hurst Street is the location of the Birmingham Hippodrome, a theatre specialising in ballet, opera, and musicals, which serves as the home of the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Immigrants from Hong Kong moved into the area around Hurst Street in the decades following World War II, and by the 1980s the area was recognized as the city's Chinese Quarter. The area is also known as the Gay Village and the annual celebration of Birmingham Pride is centred on Hurst Street.In May 2009, the Birmingham City Council approved a £530,000 environmental improvement scheme to enhance Hurst Street and its surroundings, including the extension of street trees to the full length of Hurst Street, widening pavements to create space for café bars to provide outdoor seating, and brighter street lighting with decorative lanterns.Hurst street has been experiencing gentrification, with many City Centre Apartments being built in the district. There have been a number of complaints that the nightlife will be a nuisance for apartment owners and this has put a lot of strain on businesses in the Gay Village.

The Birmingham Back to Backs (also known as Court 15) are the city's last surviving court of back-to-back houses. They are preserved as examples of the thousands of similar houses that were built around shared courtyards, for the rapidly increasing population of Britain's expanding industrial towns. They are a very particular sort of British terraced housing. This sort of housing was deemed unsatisfactory, and the passage of the Public Health Act 1875 meant that no more were built; instead byelaw terraced houses took their place. This court, at 50–54 Inge Street and 55–63 Hurst Street, is now operated as a historic house museum by the National Trust. Numerous back-to-back houses, two or three storeys high, were built in Birmingham during the 19th century. Most of these houses were concentrated in inner-city areas such as Ladywood, Handsworth, Aston, Small Heath and Highgate. Most were still in quite good condition in the early 20th century and also prior to their demolition. By the early 1970s, almost all of Birmingham's back-to-back houses had been demolished. The occupants were rehoused in new council houses and flats, some in redeveloped inner-city areas, while the majority moved to new housing estates such as Castle Vale and Chelmsley Wood.

The Chinese Quarter of Birmingham, England is located in the city centre's Southside. It is an area with a predominantly Chinese influence as a result of a concentration of Chinese owned businesses, organisations and social clubs. The area now covers a neighbourhood that includes Hurst Street, Ladywell Walk and Pershore Street. Many of the buildings in the area have Chinese architectural features and art including Chinese style roofs and wall murals in the Arcadian Centre depicting historical scenes typical of the Silk Road.

Southside is a new name for the district in the city centre of Birmingham, England. It contains the Chinese Quarter, the city's Gay Village, The Arcadian and the Hippodrome Theatre. At the end of May 2009, the Birmingham City Council approved plans for a £530,000 environmental improvement scheme at the heart of the city's Gay Village area. The changes included extending the avenue of street trees to the full length of Hurst Street and parts of Kent Street; widening pavements to create space for café bars to provide outdoor seating and brighter street lighting with decorative lanterns.

Peters Bookselling Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of J S Peters & Son Ltd., a family run business operating in the children's book selling market, and is based in Birmingham, England.

The Birmingham Hippodrome is a theatre situated on Hurst Street in the Chinese Quarter of Birmingham, England. Although best known as the home stage of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, it also hosts a wide variety of other performances including visiting opera and ballet companies, touring West End shows, pantomime and drama. With a regular annual attendance of over 600,000, the Hippodrome is the busiest single theatre in the United Kingdom, and the busiest venue for dance outside London.

The Patrick Centre for the Performing Arts is a studio theatre located on Thorp Street in the Chinese Quarter of Birmingham, England, next to the headquarters of the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Hippodrome (public access is via the Hippodrome). Seating 206, it is operated by DanceXchange and specialises in the staging of contemporary dance. The theatre was designed by Associated Architects and opened in 2001.

Ringway Centre is a Grade B locally listed building located on Smallbrook Queensway in the city centre of Birmingham, England. The six-storey, 230 metres (750 ft) long building was designed by architect James Roberts as part of the Inner Ring Road scheme in the 1950s and is notable for its gentle sweeping curved frontal elevation.Completed in 1962, the Ringway Centre was the first part of the Inner Ring Road scheme to be completed, and the only part with street-level shops and footways. The building currently provides office space on its upper floors and commercial space at street level.

Tin Tins was an all-night Birmingham dance club that closed in 1997. It influenced many contemporaneous and subsequent dance clubs. It was located in the current location of the Debenhams store in the Bullring Shopping Centre.

Freeth's Coffee House, the popular name for the Leicester Arms on the corner of Bell Street and Lease Lane in Birmingham, England, was a tavern and coffee house that operated from 1736 until 1832.One of the most celebrated meeting places of Georgian England, it was already known during the early eighteenth century as a place for small businessmen and lawyers to conduct business. During the second half of the century, when its landlord was the topical ballad-writer John Freeth, it was at the forefront of the emergence of popular political consciousness in Birmingham, as the host of radical groups such as the Birmingham Book Club, and as the focus for local opposition to the governments of Lord North.

The Thorp street drill hall is a former military installation in Birmingham, England.

The Birmingham Wholesale Markets are the largest combined wholesale fresh produce markets in the United Kingdom, with 90 trading units totalling 31,000 m2 (330,000 sq ft). Located at The Hub in Witton and easily accessible to the M6 Motorway, they include markets selling meat, fish, poultry, fruit, vegetables and flowers and are run by Birmingham Wholesale Market Company a joint venture between the tenants represented by the Birmingham Wholesale Fresh Produce Association and Birmingham City Council as landlords.