Friday, May 06, 2011

Back in the day...

I've been through that forgotten bag of old Dubai photos I mentioned the other day and scanned some of them, so it's time to share them with you.

What's interesting is not so much the buildings themselves in these photos but what's around them. Or, compared with today, what's not around them.

My first apartment was in a brand new building and I was one of the first to move in.
It was in Deira just behind Al Ghurair City. Although back in 1977 when I moved in construction of Al Ghurair Centre, as it was originally called, hadn't been started.

Mine was the top floor apartment on the right of the building. From it, three or four years later, I had a good view of Al Ghurair Centre.

 You can see that it was still  far from the built-up area that it is today - in fact it was almost rural:

Over the other side of the Creek, behind the newly-opened Trade Centre was the Hilton hotel. This photo has a note on the back that it was taken in 1979.


The Hilton was demolished a few years ago but the Clock Tower is still very much in place, although not the prominent landmark that it was back then:


The Dubai Municipality building in Deira is still there, but the surrounds are very different now.

 This one was also taken in 1979, from Deira looking across the Creek to Bur Dubai:

 No concrete banks you'll notice, just the natural sand and plenty of dhows and fishing boats.

There were a lot of original buildings in Bur Dubai too, complete with original, working wind towers.

8 comments:

Neil Roberts said...

fascinating, thank you.

Dubai Holidays said...

This is picture is sowing real Dubai.

Muna Easa Al Gurg said...

These are incredibly emotional photo's for me to look at as I was brought up during that time, and lived near the clock tower till the age of 6. Thank you for posting and sharing them with us.

Seabee said...

Muna, it was a special time wasn't it.

Steve said...

Nice to see some more late 70's photos from my childhood days. My family lived in Jebel Ali Village. The journey into Dubai as a kid seemed to take forever in those days - especially on hot black vinyl seats in the back of a Datsun 120Y

Seabee said...

Steve, did you see my post on JAV back in December 2008?

It's here.

thewaywardlinguist said...

These old pictures are incredible, I'm a new expat to Dubai, writing my own blog on how I see it, these photos have given me something to think about

Mike said...

I too lived in Dubai between 1977 and 1981 but didn't return until 2000. on seeing the clock tower from the back of a taxi, I mentioned to the taxi driver that it had been there when I was a kid. He laughed, apparently the original fell down, so they built a replica - thought you should know!