Building Name

Hanover House Corporation Street

Date
1905 - 1907
Street
Corporation Street
District/Town
Central, Manchester
County/Country
GMCA, England
Client
Co-operative Wholesale Society
Work
New Build

MANCHESTER - The hoardings have been cleared from the front of the new Central Offices of the Co‑operative Wholesale Society in Corporation Street. The premises cover an area of three and a quarter acres. The block just completed occupies the whole frontage between Balloon Street on the south, and Hanover Street on the north. The hall is 108 feet long, and its breadth 67 feet. It is spanned by a semi‑elliptical ceiling at a height of 34 feet. There are three entrances to the building, with wide stone staircases, and three electric passenger‑lifts. The building will be lighted by electricity from the society's own installation, and the heating and ventilation will be done by a modification of the Plenum system. It is of fire‑resisting construction throughout, and is 90 feet high to the parapet. The base of the walls is of Aberdeen granite, and the upper portion of Derbyshire stone and red pressed bricks. The work has been carried out by a building staff employed by the society under the direction and to the design of the architect to the society, Mr F E L Harris, ARIBA [Building News 8 March 1907 page 342]

Hanover Building on Corporation Street was built as the administrative headquarters of the Cooperative Wholesale Society. It is constructed from red brick with dressings of polished granite and sandstone (roof concealed) and is of a large rectangular plan in a Neo-Baroque style. The building is of six storeys, including the part two-storey attic and has nine-bays divided 3:3:3 by giant pilasters, and by coupled Corinthian columns at attic level, plus canted corners finished as drums at attic level. There is a massive round-headed central doorway with flanking niches and side windows set in a black polished granite surround with frieze lettered "COOPERATIVE WHOLESALE SOCIETY LIMITED". The attic floor housed the meeting hall for delegates, the Mitchell Memorial Hall, which was demolished by bombing in 1940 and replaced in the 1960s by offices designed by the CWS National Chief Architect G S Hay and CWS Regional Architect J R Tucker. The Mitchell Memorial Hall covered the top floor of the building and was named after J T W Mitchell, the President of the CWS from 1874 to his death in 1895. The Hall could hold business meetings of 1,200 delegates, with a dining room that could provide for 1,000 diners at a single sitting. The Hall was an elaborately decorated space with ample dimensions of 107 feet long by 67 feet wide and 33 feet high. The corners of the buiding were originally embellished with domed turrets, also lost during the WW II Blitz of 1940-41. Aside from the impressive exterior, adorned with cartouches with the engraved names of cities with which the CWS was connected, the most remarkable interior areas of the building were the handsome entrance halls adorned in fine polished stones and multi-coloured tiles.

Reinforced concrete construction using the Hennebique system.

Reference    Manchester Guardian Tuesday 5 March 1907 Page 5
Reference    Manchester Guardian 6 March 1907 Page 5
Reference    Building News 8 March 1907 page 342
Reference    Builder 23 March 1907 Page 273
Reference    Manchester Guardian 23 April 1907 page 12 – ferro concrete construction