Manchester Architecture part three

Manchester Ship Canal had opened in 1894 and with a general upturn in business a building boom hit Manchester. The steel framed building hit the city at the same time. The buildings in the late 1890s until the outbreak of WWI in 1914, are the some of the most bombastic in the city. This was the Imperial Age, the triumph of Pax Britannica, where the sun never set on the Empire and never set on Manchester’s cotton and manufacturing interests either. For a decade after WWI the great building programme continued.

One of the men who seized the opportunity presented by the good times was Harry S Fairhurst, another dynasty maker. His early buildings such as Lancaster House and India House (both 1906) Whitworth Street and Bridgewater House (1912), Whitworth Street are masterful examples of the new larger warehouses needed in the city. They also reflect the new fashion for a crazy, supercharged version of Renaissance meets Baroque architecture spread across huge facades. After the First World War, Fairhurst shaped the city with more essays in gargantuan Classical structures such as Ship Canal House (1927) on King Street. His Lee House (1931) is a truncated example at eight storeys of the International Modern meets Art Deco.

A contemporary was Charles Heathcote who mingled dainty detail with powerhouse punch. Notable buildings of his include Parrs Bank (1902) York Street, the Eagle Star Building (1911), Cross Street, Lloyd’s Bank (1915), King Street and the earlier 107 Piccadilly textile warehouse (1899). Clegg, Fryer and Penman’s St James’ Building (1913), Oxford Road, another colossal Baroque warehouse, now converted into offices, stands out for its sheer scale alone.

Many of the earlier buildings in this period, such as Lancaster House and also Charles Trubshaw’s Midland Hotel (1903) and the Refuge Assurance Building by the Alfred and Paul Waterhouse in various stages from 1891, are faced in terracotta and faience. This was a popular material at the time because large decorative patterns could be much manufactured quickly and smoke and soot didn’t adhere to it so readily.

Perhaps the finest of these tiled wonders and one that points to the future: the YMCA (1911) building (now St George's House) on Peter Street by Woodhouse, Corbett and Dean. Built of reinforced concrete this mingles Art Nouveau motifs with restrained ornamentation (as well as a copy of Donatello's St George) that whiffs of the changes taking place in architecture.

Working outside the city centre – perhaps they simply failed to get the commissions - was the practice of Edgar Wood and J.H. Sellars. This remarkable pair, first separately and then together, moved from Arts and Crafts, through a proto-Expressionism to the International Modern in their buildings. Edgar Woods, First Church of Christ, Scientist (1903), Daisy Bank Road in Victoria Park, is both original and startling. Other buildings of theirs survive, particularly in the suburb town of Middleton.

Similarly original is the eccentric but delightful Mediterranean inspired work of Richard Harding Watt, a Mancunian glove manufacturer turned amateur architect in Knutsford, south of the city. If Manchester has a Charles Rennie Mackintosh, it's Edgar Wood, if it has a Gaudi, it's Harding Watt.

Before the International Modern movement swept many of the older styles aside after WWII, Edwin Lutyens designed the Midland Bank (1929), King Street, in another grand and gracious take on a classical theme. Meanwhile the city provided the Central Library (1934) and the Town Hall Extension (1938), both by Vincent Harris, the first in a circular Classical building, the second a strong but odd building with high gables and sheer facades.

In both the Midland Bank and the Town Hall Extension the change of the design tide can be seen in with ornament free windows on blank walls. Historicism – looking back to older styles – is on the retreat.

The movements sweeping across architecture outside Britain are by the thirties clearly making themselves felt in Manchester. JW Beaumont’s Kendals Department Store (1939) on Deansgate and Owen Williams’ Daily Express Building (1939), now offices on Great Ancoats Street provided examples of how the world was moving on. The dramatic black glass, round cornered Daily Express building, might have been amongst the earliest of the major Manchester modern buildings but it has never been bettered in the post-WWII years. First time visitors to the city frequently wonder if it was built within the last decade.

After bomb damage in World War II and the realisation that there was a new world situation, the city came up with the remarkable Manchester Plan of 1945. This envisaged massive changes including wholesale destruction and renewal across the city to meet with the new world situation. But Britain’s rapid decline from power and a recession in manufacturing meant that much was never realised. Instead the changes were piecemeal if often huge.

However architectural activity only really got going again in the 1960s as investment returned to the North. The best commercial buildings were Hay, Burnet, Tait and Partners’, Co-operative Movement’s complex on Miller Street including New Century House and the soaring 25 storey CIS Tower (1962).

The best academic work was by Gibbon of Cruickshank and Seward off Sackville Street with buildings such as the Renold Building (1962). Other interesting work includes LC Howitt, Hollings College, Wilmslow Road, Fallowfield (1960), nicknamed the ‘Toastrack’ because of its appearance. More controversial was Covell, Matthews and Partners, Piccadilly Buildings (1965), a vast redevelopment on bomb damaged land which was a Brutalist essay in concrete.

This, when it first opened was admired as a splash of Americana in the city, then it weathered badly and was treated worse, ultimately it became one of the most derided modern structures. Strange how things come round though, the main tower, City Tower, cleaned and tidied by developer Bruntwood, is again a city structure of which to be proud.

In the 1980s Manchester played a brief cameo role as a leader in club and bar design with the Hacienda (1982, demolished) and Dry Bar (1989). Both came from the pen of Ben Kelly, both were comissioned by Factory Music and both delivered a pared down, hard, industrial aesthetic that was aped around the globe.

Recent architectural work of note includes much by local design practices. Indeed with firms such as Ian Simpson Architects and Mills Beaumont Leavey Channon the dynasties have returned. The latter practice have been responsible over the last fifteen years for buildings such as Siemens Building, Princess Parkway, West Didsbury, Homes for Change, Chichester Road, Hulme and the Manchester Metropolitan University Library, Aytoun Street.

Ian Simpson Architects (ISA) meanwhile have almost single-handedly reshaped the skyline with Beetham Tower and No 1 Deansgate. The former is 47 storeys tall, made up a hotel and apartments, it's easily the tallest building in the city. ISA also gained several key commissions post the 1996 IRA bomb including the masterplan for the redevelopment of the city centre after that atrocity. Other work includes major refurbishments of Manchester Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry, plus new build such as Urbis on Corporation Street.

Other notable local practices who’ve completed good work include Stephenson Bell with the International Convention Centre, Windmill Street, the remodelling of Manchester Central and a superb clinic in New Islington. Their proposal for a new Chetham's School of Music building above Walker's Croft will re-define the whole of the Victoria Station end of town.

Other key local practices have been Hodder Associates, Centenary Building, Salford University and Marks and Spencer bridge, Cross Street, and OMI with Martinscroft Housing, Boundary Lane, Hulme, Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist, Peter Street and the Spectrum housing on Blackfriars Street. Meanwhile BDP own office on Ducie Street is both elegant and sympathetic.

A relatively young practice Walker Simpson have produced a splendid structure with North City Library and Sixth Form Centre in Harpurhey, north Manchester featuring an eye-catching wall of photovoltaic panels to help cut carbon emissions.

Significant non-local designers of the new Manchester include: Nicholas Thompson of RHWL with The Bridgewater Hall; Michael Hopkins Associates with Manchester Art Gallery extension and refurbishment; Michael Wilford with The Lowry at the Quays; Santiago Calatrava with Trinity Bridge, off St Mary’s Parsonage; Daniel Libeskind with the Imperial War Museum North at the Quays, Will Alsop with Chips and Tadao Ando with his (sadly misconceived) Piccadilly Gardens Pavilion.

This last structure is derided by most people as a waste of time, other buildings such as the Manchester Art Gallery work has been almost universally praised for its combination of subtlety and strength.

Over the last decade and a half in a time of boom-building, whole new areas of the city were re-invented, Spinningfields, New Islington, Piccadilly Basin, parts of east Manchester, Hulme, and MediaCity UK at the Quays. The issues behind these large schemes and whether they have succeeded or not requires another article in this series. As does the role of developers such as Urban Splash, Argent, Allied London, Bruntwood and others.

One lesson which was never learned from the nineteenth century was the need to moderate the architecture of expediency. In a desire to exploit the the good times, developers and planners dumped on the city numerous sub-standard, often brick built, apartment blocks that litter large areas of the city.

These negatives aside, there has been a very recent triumph. One building which combines flash looks with a degree of restraint is the excellent and award-winning 81m (266ft) tall Civil Justice Centre by Australian practice Denton, Corker, Marshall. With protruding glass elements floating one over the other, it gives the west of the city centre an exciting new silhouette.

Whether this type of building or show-boating architecture such as Ando's Pavilion, Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum North, Alsop's Chips, or Wilford’s Lowry respectively, will stand the test of time remains to be seen. Perhaps it will be the local practices, as they have so often done, in the past that will be remembered longest in the city and in the end contribute most to the ever-changing city scene.

This section will be incorporated into Manchester Confidential's developing guidebook. For the first part of this architectural history, click here. For the second part, click here.