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marvellous modern icons
we want to make sure our monthly features aren’t such tales of doom, gloom and despair that you lose the will to live, so in this section we hope to uplift the spirits with a regular dose of the city’s best bits - buildings and structures great and small, municipal or vernacular that we think are just fabulous!
the only dilemma was how to kick off this section - so many twentieth century treasures but where to start? the CIS, Gateway House, The Town Hall Extension, Lee House, the incredible Toast Rack, UMIST campus, the Crown Courts, Kendal Milne, Sunlight House, Albert Bridge House, the Mancunian Way – all capture the spirit of the city at formative moments in its never ending story, but often have as many detractors as defenders.
Each month we will dedicate this page to just one of a plethora of Manchester Modernist Icons!
Tatler News Cinema/ Cornerhouse 1, Oxford Rd,
P Cummings, 1935 - present.
Further up Oxford road stands Cornerhouse Cinema One on the approach to our very favourite station.
Today it is an integral part of Cornerhouse, Manchester’s centre for contemporary visual arts and the moving image, longtime champion of independent film and experimental arts, complete with three cinemas, three galleries, a bookshop, bar and café/restaurant.
Opening with a flourish in 1985, it was ahead of its time, an arts venue that was also a cinema that was also a café. It was a little piece of Berlin or New York in Manchester and with its great location and glass fronted airy lookout, it quickly became a hangout for a generation of the city’s movie buffs, writers, artists and ne’er-do-wells. Novels have been scribbled, crossed out and agonized over endless refills of the legendary leaky teapots (the hallucinogenic Vurt by Jeff Noon is a classic drug fuelled 80’s vision of post apocalyptic Manchester), TV series and production companies were developed (Coogan, Aherne and Henry Normal made the table at the top of the stairs their unofficial office for many years before the money rolled in), music revolutions were hatched (Happy Mondays skulked midmorning, hung-over and worse for wear from a long night out, in the seats overlooking the station) and international footballers nurtured dreams of becoming French philosophers(Eric Cantona spent so much time in the cafe it’s a wonder he ever got any football practice in at all…)
Over the past 25 years it has survived the advent of the mega multiplex, a dozen coffee chains, a refurbished City Art Gallery and the short-lived glitz of Urbis, its unique combination of contemporary film and visual arts programming, alongside international film festivals, major art events such as New Contemporaries, workshops, talks and informal quiz nights, readings and music events ensures that it remains a key cultural and social centre for the city and its visitors and generally deserves this month’s Iconic status. In particular, its largest cinema is of modernsit interest. Do read on...
Like our other two people’s palaces, this site houses many old ghosts of cinemas past, opening as the Manchester Electric Theatre as early as 1911. But as the days of the silent movie dwindled, the Majestic as it had then become, closed down for good in 1923 and was eventually demolished.
Cinema One as we see it today originally opened in May 1935 as the Tatler News Theatre, with a seating capacity of 300, designed by Peter Cummings, who built Appleby Lodge opposite Platt Fields, sharing its decidedly modernist shape and sleek minimalistic charms. Sited next to Oxford Road Railway Station this was in an ideal site for this 'drop-in' continuous programme of travel films, cartoons and newsreels including local items of interest, and this popular sub genre of cinema thrived here until September 1959, when the advent of television killed the need to leave the house and pay to watch the news.
After a brief closure the cinema reopened in 1961 reinvented as the Tatler Classic, becoming known as a home for movie buffs and discriminating audiences with a mix of subtitled European contemporary films and classic double bills. Derek Southall in his booklet Magic in the Dark remembers this second version Tatler fondly as having a ‘terrific programme’ but the cinema being a woefully rundown place (it took until 1997 to get that leaky roof fixed). Then in 1969 things took on a more exotic turn with another reinvention as the Tatler Cinema Club, specialising in uncensored films and occasional strip shows to club members only, a membership that handily could be arranged with an hour’s notice. As dismal as numbers often were (and as a young idealist involved in regular feminist raidings of the club, I can vouch for how empty many of the showings actually were! ps. Apologies for any distress caused to any former patrons who might be reading…I was very young and didnt quite realise that the club was more tragic than dangerous) the cinema remained open for business until 1981, when doors finally closed.
Then in 1985 the former Shaw’s furniture showroom was bought to be converted into an arts complex of 2 cinemas seating 170 and 60, with galleries, café and bookshop. It was quickly realised that the former news theatre would make the best and largest screen of the complex and so it has remained, arguably enjoying the most popular and successful period of its life. A happy ending for a worthy Icon you might think, but if this month’s features have demonstrated anything, it’s that no matter how resourceful and adaptable this most beloved form of mass entertainment has been, public taste and demand is fickle and mercurial. Oxford Rd not so long ago was rich in picture palaces, sumptuous, vulgar, restrained, exotic – whichever direction you looked was a visual treat for the eye.
As the millennium kick starts its brand new decade just be on the alert to the dangers threatening the last of our peoples palaces and the tradition of varied, independent and local entertainment they uphold. If you love the idea of independent cinema and innovative programming, please use it and support it. And nag them about that innovative programming, which might have lost its mettle a little of late….
It just might be the last (great) picture show in town.
cornerhouse cinema one / the Tatler - modernist icon - january 2010
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For December we continue our festive exploration of Wythenshawe's modernist churches with the old Forum Cinema, resurrected as a house of worship in 1976. A deserved Icon of the month......
Jehovah’s Witnesses Assembly Hall, Northenden,
formally the Forum Cinema, 1935, Grade II listed 2001
The Forum Cinema opened in 1935 and was built to provide entertainment for the inhabitants of Northenden and the newly built houses surrounding Wythenshawe Park at Northern Moor. In common with the hundreds of suburban cinemas built in Britain during the inter war years, the Forum was built to a high standard and of a size that now seems a little ambitious. Whilst initially very popular it was the suburban cinemas that suffered the most when televisions became commonplace in households. The story of The Forum’s demise as a cinema is a familiar one but one that thankfully has a happy ending.
The Forum did not suffer the sub division or conversion to bingo that many cinemas endured in the 1960’s and 70’s, and having been designed with a large stage to cater for theatrical productions from the outset, when cinema operations ceased The Forum became a theatre. When this venture failed The Forum seemed destined to go the way of many of its kind and be faced demolition. A saviour for the building, now showing something of its age, came in an unlikely guise.
In 1976 the Jehovah’s Witnesses were looking for a large building that could act as regional assembly hall for regular meetings. The policy, at the time, within the Jehovah’s Witnesses organisation was to try to find redundant buildings and convert to such use, this being the most economical and practical solution to their current needs. The layout of cinema buildings proved ideal for what the Witnesses required and with many cinemas closing at the time it was not hard to find a suitable building and a suitable candidate was to found at Northenden.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses faith involves little or no formal ceremony with worship mainly taking the form of talks and bible readings meaning the assembly halls do not need to be uniquely suited to the needs of worship. The former Forum, with its large stage and ample seating, offered everything that was required with the added bonus of being a building with great character and well located for visitors from across the region. The buildings former, less spiritual, uses held no problem for the new owners and they were able to start using the building almost immediately.
Since then the Witnesses have carried out a long and sustained programme of repair and renovation. The Assembly Hall is obviously a very important building to the group, the auditorium providing space for the meetings that see Witnesses travel from all over the northwest and the former café now serving as a teaching facility. It is clear that every effort is taken to make sure the building is well maintained but what is equally refreshing is the current owners’ commitment to retain the character of the building and in no way disguise its former use.
Great efforts have been made to decorate sympathetically and where fixtures, such as light fittings, have been lost in the past, every effort has been made to replace them like for like. The result is that, beside Stockport’s marvellous Plaza, the Jehovah’s Witnesses Assembly Hall is the best-preserved cinema interior in Manchester. When the building was Grade II listed in 2001 the current occupiers were worried that English Heritage would insist on retrospective renovations. But when English Heritage inspectors visited, it was deemed that any work that had already been done was not only of a high standard but clearly carried out in keeping with the style of the time. The ‘art deco’ theme is followed a little too heavy handedly for my taste but anyone wishing to see a 1930s cinema looking as good, if not better, than it would have done in its heyday you could do worse than visiting The Jehovah’s Witness Assembly Hall in Northenden.
*** thanks to Eddy Rhead for his text and image for our wildcard Icon of the Month, Dec 2009
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the glass city – a glittering love affair…
The typical city of the 21st century is a skyward looking metropolis of towering shards of shimmering glass and blades of steel, a triumph of engineering hovering in space, sleek, sophisticated and futuristic. And this penchant for glass, reflection and transparency is no flash in the pan, no recent trend – architects have been obsessed with creating the ultimate glass building for centuries, ever since the first glass blower offered the possibility of windows in those pesky arrow slits! The history of the cathedral alone is ample illustration of the battle to increase the possibility of light and scale without the bulk, the solidity, of stone, bricks and mortar…
Lately, this fascination with glass has become something of a cliché, our landscapes awash with identikit lego pieces, with little to tell them apart or merit awe and admiration. And Manchester is no exception. Look around the city today and there is manifestation aplenty of our own love affair with all things shiny, dazzling, illuminative; Beetham tower, Urbis, the whole of Spinningfields. In itself this is no bad thing; god knows we crave light in this grey northern climate. But with a few notable exceptions, the trend has become repetitive and lack lustre, a lazy short hand for modernity…
So this month we dedicate our pages to three shimmering treasures of the 20th century, one rightly a celebrated asset to the cityscape, one currently under appreciated which we believe deserves the same accolades, and for our dear departed RIP section, something of a wildcard to surprise, delight and sadden….read on to wonder at the golden age of glass!!
Daily Express Building, Great Ancoats St, Sir Owen Williams, 1939, grade II* listed (1974)
For many this remains the definitive Modernist building, a classic art deco palace. The last of a trio commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper magnate, in London, Glasgow and Manchester, the daily express building on the corner of Great Ancoats St and Oldham Rd was completed in 1939 and is the city’s only 1930’s listed building.
Like its sister depots it was built by Sir Owen Williams, a trained engineer who primarily designed buildings as functional structures sheathed with decorative facades, and is said to be an exact copy of the Fleet St site. But whilst they were built in collaboration with Ellis and Clark, in Manchester Williams took on the roles of architect and engineer. His other landmark sites include the Dorchester Hotel, the Boots pharmaceutical factory, as well as the M1 motorway.
Certainly the trio were created as prestigious eulogies to the new era of modernity and progress, and hailed by Beaverbrook as 'Britain's most modern building for Britain's most modern newspaper'. The figure of Beaverbrook in this little tale represents the archetypal press baron, self made, ambitious and political. The Daily Express was founded in 1900 by Cyril Arthur Pearson and bought in 1916 by the future Lord Beaverbrook, who set about its transformation. It was one of the first papers to carry gossip, sports, and women's features and the first newspaper in Britain to have a crossword. Trotsky wrote dispatches for the paper following his expulsion from the Soviet Union. Under Beaverbrook the newspaper achieved a phenomenally high circulation, setting records for newspaper sales several times throughout the 1930s.He was equally serious about his Manchester edition, moving his favourite journalist Arthur Christiansen to the city to edit the paper. As Ed Glinert explains in his highly entertaining and anecdote filled Manchester Compendium, Christiansen wasn’t best please to be posted though, writing in his memoirs, ‘Manchester can be a pretty awful town at any time of the week’.
The exterior with its all-glass frontage, sleek and flush in translucent glass and black vitrolite, deco’s trademark opaque glass manufactured by Pilkingtons and available in a variety of colours, punctuated with chromium strips and rounded edges, is both ambitious and spectacular, even today. The top layers are set back in tiers, topped with a turret on the left corner, including built-in planning for window cleaning, a trademark of Williams' architectural work. Cradles are suspended from a series of permanent arms projecting from the fifth floor balconies enabling the cleaners to haul themselves up and down the face of the building. Its piece de résistance though was the triple height press hall, an arrangement facilitating a spectacular sight for passersby, particularly at night when the presses were in full flow and the hall and basement brightly lit, the glass box becoming a conceptual device, not just for letting in daylight but as a window into the premises, all part of Beaverbrook’s ambitions to promote his newspaper empire as progressive, dynamic, fast paced and up-to-the-minute. This was in marked contrast to the usual enclosed world of industrial production, with the factory in effect becoming a shop window. A window into the new world of speed, efficiency and modernity...
Sadly, like the city’s long tradition as a thriving northern Fleet St, the printing hall and its offices fell into disuse in the early ‘80’s, standing empty and forlorn for too long, victim to the publishing revolution of the 80’s fuelled by Eddie Shah’s Today newspaper, which threatened the whole status quo with its use of computers to typeset and print the newspaper at a much cheaper cost.
The story of its renovation into predictable offices and luxury accommodation mixed usage can be read at Cube’s City Tours website
Whilst for engineering and technical stuff do have a peek at this site, which is full of fascinating details on the wizardry of this mancunian treasure.
The final word though should go to the lovingly created Lost in Manchester, whose affectionate tribute is demonstration enough for the special hold the Vitolite Liner has over the city and its citizens even today.
daily express building - modernist icon - november 2009
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This month we are celebrating our 6 month birthday with the launch of our first mini publication, a set of 4 classic modernist Manchester postcards, so it seemed only right to dedicate our features of the month sections to these truly iconic beauties….
CIS Tower,Miller Street,
Gordon Tait / G S Hay, 1959 – 62 Grade II listed.
The CIS tower has long watched over the Manchester skyline and for many remains the iconic symbol of the city, despite having been recently overtaken in height at least by Beetham Tower at the other end of Deansgate. When completed in 1962, the CIS was the third tallest building in Europe and was the UK's tallest building outside of London for 43 years, only relinquishing its title in 2006 to Birmingham's Holloway Circus Tower, which itself was swiftly beaten by our own Beetham Tower later that year.
The tower sits in the heart of the whole Balloon St – Corporation St Co-operative headquarters, consisting of not only the 25 storey skyscraper, but a 5 storey lower part and the 14 storey New Century House, a complex created to be the Co-operative Society's flagship head office and administrative centre and add to the prestige of the co-operative society and movement.
To this end, no expense was spared. The design team, who included the Co-op's own G.S.Hay and Gordon Tait of the architects Burnett, Tait & Partners, visited Chicago as part of a fact finding mission to America and were inspired by the city’s Inland Steel Building by celebrated architect/engineers, Skidmore Owings & Merrill. The Pevsner Architectural guide to Manchester, not always the biggest fan of post war architecture in the city is lavish in its praise for the CIS, attributing much of the success of the building to the company’s dedication and attention to detail, declaring this ‘a fact, no doubt, that explains the outstanding quality of the CIS building, which still holds its own among later more high tech city centre buildings today.’
Looking At Buildings, Pevsner’s online architectural survey of Britain, features the CIS and CWS in its ‘buildings in focus’ section with enough technical and engineering details, architectural language and long lingering descriptions of interior veneers, concrete cladding and curtain-walled slabbing to satisfy all your needs.
For facts, figures, building specifications and nerdily fascinating data on the 2006 solar recladding also take a look at the ever reliable skyscrapernews.com website.
Public art fans and those interested in issues of public realm will need no reminding that New Century House contains an exuberant abstract relief by John McCarthy, whose water feature could benefit from some tlc and a long overdue declutter; the conference hall features figurative sculptures by Stephen Sykes; whilst the towers own entrance hall is graced by a bronzed fiberglass mural by William Mitchell.
CIS tower - modernist icon - october 2009
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Nibs Dalwood
& the case of the misplaced artist….
The MoberlyTower relief (see our August feature for details) long thought to be the work of Mitzi Cunliffe has been finally reunited with Hubert 'Nibs' Dalwood (1924 - 76) the renowned British sculptor who studied at Bath Academy of Art under Kenneth Armitage. He taught at a number of art schools including Leeds and the RCA and held a professorship at the University of Illinois before being appointed Head of Sculpture at the Central School of Art and Crafts in 1974. Throughout his career he continued to exhibit widely as well as take a variety of public commissions. In 1962 he represented the UK at the Venice Biennale alongside Robert Adams and was awarded first prize for sculpture.
Like many of his contemporaries his early work was largely figurative moving ever more towards abstraction, combining geometric forms with free and organic forms and juxtaposing extreme differences of scale. And Like his contemporaries he became fascinated with the relationship of sculpture to architecture and their relation to the body, explaining
'Scale is the important thing, above all else. That is what the Greeks were so good at, their greatest achievement, not shared with any other culture: relating their buildings and their spaces, even when very large, to the scale of a human being. That is what architecture is for me, and that is what sculpture is also.'
These concerns led Dalwood out of the gallery and the exhibition hall towards work in the public realm, including several public projects such as his proposal for a relief sculpture for the façade of the LeedsCityArtGallery and making work for universities at Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds.
The MoberleyTower belongs to this period, placing it firmly within these growing issues and concerns, a creative and intellectual desire to integrate the challenges of sculpture at the largest scale to our daily experiences directly in the urban landscape. The panel sits immediately beneath the long window panes running the full length of the side elevation, directing the gaze upwards along the towers impressive height. Its position just above natural eye level and directly confronting the pedestrian or passerby on the pavement both accentuates the buildings slender elegance and humanises the experience of gazing skyward, breaking up the angular abstract column of the structure with this pleasingly mysterious and textured design. The effect is, just as he wanted, rather like inspecting the friezes adorning the structure of the Parthenon, the mind boggling at the overall scale and height of the edifice, yet reassured by the familiarity and detail of the artistry of the decorative panels.
The knowledge that this dynamic geometric pattern, a series of interlocking giant tessera, abstract yet swirling with enigmatic organic motifs, is in effect one of a loose ‘series’ of similar commissions, re-unites this lonely mural with its ‘family’ of university commissions at long last, including the beautiful Bodington Hall frieze, similarly placed on the central refectory block.
Upon his early and unexpected death in 1976, already becoming overshadowed by a new generation made up largely of Caro’s protégés, the critic William Packer called him 'one of the best artists of his generation, a man who could have civilised and enlivened our cities and fired our imaginations.'
Let’s pray that the combined will of the University Estates Department, the Twentieth Century Society and the WhitworthArtGallery succeed in ensuring that this belatedly rediscovered treasure continues to 'civilise and enliven' Manchester.
MMS salutes you Mr Dalwood. Here’s to you and your forgotten frieze, reunited all too briefly!
Take a look at Tom Overton’ illuminating short essay for an overview of his life and career and this link for a view of Bodington Hall, Leeds University.
nibs dalwood - modernist icon - september 2009
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ps - special mention to salford's tree of knowledge – the twentieth century society celebrates the reprieve of the mural, demolition halted but not out of the woods yet, in the following press release....
‘Believed to be the only C20 ceramic mural in Salford, the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ mural was designed for the CromwellSecondary School for Girls by Alan Boyson, designer maker and then former lecturer at the School of Ceramics in the College of Art, Wolverhampton. It is an astounding piece of polychromatic work in mixed media designed with a direct association to the building’s main function.
The Society has been working closely with TACS in the past year to highlight the plight of many post-war murals across the country. The post-war period in this country saw a tremendous flowering of mural art and some of the very best remain unprotected. The listing of the Tree of Knowledge, along with the other recent listing of a William Mitchell mural in Islington, London, sends a clear message that good artworks should be protected in their own right. The listing was supported by the local paper, the Salford Star and many local people.
EH said the mural demonstrated clever use of colour, was a good example of integration between art and architecture and showed a high level of artistry’.
bbc online tells us the story of the local campaign to save salford's tree of knowledge here.
lets keep an eye on future progress!
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Mancunian Way,
the Inner Relief Way, 1965 -1992 to the present.
At first sight this might seem an odd even perverse choice, a mistake perhaps.
Have we gone too far with this adoration of the brutal, this ugly ode to the car, all round pollutant and bete noir of the green lobby, destroyer of much of central Manchester’s original pre-loft dwelling citizenry? Bear with us on this one dear reader and keep the urbanists greatest ally at the ready – a curious eye!
Daringly then, and to coincide with the theme of our next outing, ‘the mancunian way: the alchemy of concrete’, we thought this month’s Modernist Icon should be an exploration of the Manchester flyover, our own mini orbital, winner of the 1968 concrete award and pride of the Highways department, who close the whole 3.02 miles twice a year for a thorough shampoo and set!
The Mancunian way dominates the city - its presence an indelible part of Mancunian life and for some who actually live directly by it even more intrusive and intimate, so familiar as to have become invisible, ordinary and inconsequential. Indeed some of us no longer know how to sleep without the constant roar of lorries and juggernauts racing just a few feet from our pillows.
The architecture books and social histories either pay it little attention or condemn it as marauder of the old city, evil brain child of the infamous 1945 Manchester Plan, a concrete monster that cut through the city centre, driving a wedge between neighbourhoods and effectively sealing off the inner city, condemning it to backwater status with all its associated social and economic privations. Certainly if the plan had fully come to fruition we would now have very little of the city centre as we know it. Luckily it wasn’t to be and the city we see today is in many respects an accident of history, a hotch-potch of remnants, relics of ideas and visions half realised or that never made it off the drawing board.
Despite all this the flyover has its enthusiasts and not just the infamous concrete society. In fact a peruse of the internet quickly reveals we are not the first to fall for its charms and peculiarities or at least find it intriguing enough to physically explore and write about it.
The Manchester Zedders try it for size,click here and like minded urbanists that they are, they soon contend that the Mancunian Way is where Manchester’s smile would be if it had one…
Lets start our own exploration with some facts and figures:
The Mancunian Way was built by in stages, the first part from Chester Rd in Hulme to Upper Brook St built between 1964-67 by the city engineers and G Maunsell & Partners and included the first section of truly urban motorway to be constructed in the Region, the A57(M)/A635(M). It was officially opened by Mr Harold Wilson, on the 5th of May 1967, only the second time a section of motorway in the Region had been opened by the Prime Minister in office and as we all know in 1968, the Concrete Society awarded the Mancunian Way their highest honour. A plaque commemorating this can be seen on the bridge over Upper Brook Street.
In 1992 the Mancunian Way was extended to the east by Pin Mill Brow with a new flyover at the A6, replacing the former roundabout and landscaped pedestrian footpaths. This 300 metre section is officially the A635(M) and is the shortest motorway in the UK, constructed with a composite steel and concrete deck. The City Engineer at this time was Sinclair Mcleod. Alan Goss and Tony Buller were the Design and Resident Engineers respectively.
The construction of the Mancunian way was a massive undertaking and a Parliamentary Bill was required to authorise its construction which received Royal Assent in 1961. Its primary purpose was to carry traffic, much of it commercial, between the industrial areas on the east side of the city to Manchester Docks and TraffordPark. The intention was that it would form part of a comprehensive network of urban motorways envisaged in the SELNEC (South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire) Highway Plan of 1962.
The Motorway Archive has all the details and takes up the story -
The project was carried out in two stages. Work on the first stage, which involved the construction of a 950 yard length of all-purpose length of dual carriageway east of A6, started in November 1963. It was opened to traffic in November 1965.
The second stage, between the A6 and the A56 was designed as a motorway and construction commenced in December 1964. It included the elevated section, which is a pre-stressed concrete structure 3232 feet 6 inches long between the end abutments. Of the thirty two spans, twenty eight are each 105 feet long, two are 60 feet to accommodate ground level features and the eastern and western spans are 97 feet 6 inches and 75 feet respectively.
Between Cambridge Street and Brook Street the layout changes from dual two-lane to dual three-lane carriageways. With a lane width of 11 feet, the overall width of the eastern part of the structure is 79 feet and elsewhere, 61 feet. Ramped connections from the local road system are provided at Cambridge Street and Brook Street.
If all this extraordinary detail, royal approval, involvement of prime ministers, innovative use of raised sections and the like isn’t enough to persuade you that the flyover is no ordinary roadway but a very special beast, then how about some structural detail?
The main structural element is a hollow box spine beam with the top slab cantilivered out on both sides. Over 85% of the superstructure is constructed with precast concrete units of uniform cross section. The transition section between the two and three lane parts of the structure is formed with in-situ concrete, and includes the ramps which carry a single traffic lane and in contrast to the Hammersmith Flyover, when three basic types of precast unit were used for the beams, cantilevers and deck slabs, the functions of all three were combined in a single unit. As a result, both the casting and erection were simpler and more economic.
An embossed copper waterproofing membrane was laid over the entire carriageway area followed by a 2¾ inch thick double layer of hot rolled asphalt surfacing whilst the bridge over the River Medlock was constructed with a deck of standard precast prestressed beams spanning 38 feet 7 inches.
And if the technical stuff fails to impress then how about the softer detail, the extra care to soften its hard veneer, temper the engineering ingenuity with decorative sections in places that cars wouldn’t ever travel?
The eighteen pedestrian subways included in the scheme were designed as reinforced concrete box culverts with the walls finished in glazed tiles. The traffic islands beneath the elevated section were extensively landscaped in order to provide attractive secluded rest areas for local residents. Areas flanking the road along its entire length received similar treatment.
The Mancunian way is in short a most curious monster, a Frankenstein creation, an intriguing phenomenon twixt science, engineering and art, and once you get the bug its hard not to be obsessed.
The view from the roadside is one thing; a blur of tarmac, a hinterland of unknown districts, the odd flash of urban graffiti, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The view from beneath, from under the belly of the beast is quite another matter, revealing a wealth of architectural detail and ingenuity as great as the inside of any medieval cathedral, providing entertainments, a range of urban activities both legitimate and unsavoury, and nurturing an unexpected wealth of species and wildlife in its secluded stretches of wildscape.
Love it or hate it, do join us on Thursday 27 August for a hike along its undercarriage or perhaps at Urbis later. Inspect this legendary beast from a different perspective and perhaps understand why we felt bound to include it in the mms hall of fame. From this new vantage those glazed tiles and bursts of geometrically patterned concrete add texture, even charm, and reveal a vulnerable side to this mighty car carrier. The landscaped borders so crucial in providing a sound barrier for residents now offer shelter to urban foxes, colonies of hedgehogs and respite to all manner of passing swans, Canada geese and lone prehistoric looking herons. There’s even an allotment and wild garden doing its best to survive its unlikely conditions…
You never know, you might even learn to love it for the peculiar kind of beauty that it is.
mancunian way -Manchester icon and urban dragon, august 2009
***Thanks to The Motorway Archive, for a wealth of fascinating structural and engineering details -see
here , and the Guide to Civil Engineering in Manchester see here.
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Midland Bank,
corner of KingStreet & SpringGardens,
1929-35 – present. Grade II Listed.
Resplendent on its island corner at the east end of the street, the former Midland Bank, ziggurat, wedding cake, rubbick cube, classical temple, effortlessly holds its own amidst a plethora of impressive banking establishments clustered around the conservation area of Spring Gardens and King St. Designed in 1929 and erected 1933-35 this deceptively austere beauty is by the celebrated Lutyens of St Peter’s Square cenotaph fame, in collaboration with Whinney, Son & Austell Hall.
Sir Edwin Luytens (1869–1944) is an undisputed doyen of modernist British architects. Known to most of us for his epoch defining cenotaphs, he began his career designing small houses in Surrey prior to his most noteworthy public achievement, the planning of New Delhi, India. Other principal works include domestic and public buildings at Hampstead garden suburb; the HamptonCourtBridge; and the British embassy at Washington, D.C. In the 1920s and 1930s, he produced the designs for several commercial buildings, notably the Midland Bank in Manchester (1933–35) and the bank’s head office in the city of London (1921–39).
The Manchester Midland, latterly HSBC bank but affectionately referred to still as either the Midland or simply ‘the Luytens’, is imposing yet compact, affording striking views from every angle. The epitome of classical, restrained deco-esque modernism, it made a mundane trip to the cash machine a glamorous occasion, especially if you chose to enjoy the showshopping internal facilities, rather than the hole in the wall outside. Personally I sporadically ‘lost’ a switch card just for the joy of collecting my replacement from the basement deposit vaults and luxuriating in the harmless pretence of visiting my own exclusive ‘ladies’ club! The Pevsner Guide to Manchester (editor Hartwell) takes up the description –
It is a nearly square block and treated as such, with the upper motifs identical on all four sides. The two angle porches are in King Street, and the entrances all have pilasters which die away and disappear, as at his Midland Bank on Poultry in London. The elevationsteps back and contracts and the tops of the centre motifs have French pavilionroofs. Sheer walls with simple openings contrast with the texture of the lower entrances and the upper stages. The proportions are ingeniously calculated, as Lutyens in his later years adored to do. The top stage is two-thirds of the stage from the obelisks to the next set-back, and that middle stage is two-thirds of the bottom stage. Also the walls above the first floor sill have a very slight batter: 1 in. in every 11 ft (2.54cm in every 3.4m). The banking hall could not be sky lit, so Lutyens gave it arcading on all four sides and wooden galleries much as in Wren churches. The galleries have large arched windows to let enough lightin. The Delhi order, with bells, which Lutyens devised for the Viceroy’s House in New Delhi (1913-29), is used.
Elegant description as usual but for more anecdotal details where better to turn than Discovering Manchester (Barry Worthington), for these humanising nuggets –
Lutyens wanted to create an imposing building by combining mass and solidity with simplicity. A tall steel frame is clad with Portland stone but the corners and upper storeys are proportionally cut back, with the windows and architectural feature designed to emphasise distortions of height and perspective to create a structure that seems to soar. But Lutyens didn’t quite get free reign with this commission – the bank chairman Reginald McKenna not only foisted the fussy top storey onto the design but insisted that plans to install a marble border around the banking hall be omitted, due to the dangers of slippage to the largely hobnail wearing Mancunians. (He was talking about boot wearing businessmen and manufacturers, not just bank employees. At that time, older ‘city gents’ in these parts still considered shoes and wrist watches a sign of decadence!) It’s said that Lutyens never ventured north again!
Empty since June 2008 when HSBC moved to the soulless premises of their super boutique branch in St Anne’s Square, where head phoned hostesses stalk the lobby like disinterested Armani sales assistants, despite much talk of restaurant or luxury retail conversation which has never materialised, there is apparently still a planning application lurking somewhere by Stephenson Bell for high spec offices and top apartment.
Up to date information most welcome on what’s beginning to look a forlorn and cobwebby masterpiece. A cenotaph indeed, to the death of the banking palazzo, to drama and vision in commercial buildings…
midland bank - modernist ziggarat & icon, july 2009 | 
