Manchester House Princess Street

In January 1909 advertisements appeared in the Manchester Guardian for rooms to let in this building – the first references to “Manchester House” in the newspaper. Completion of building works must therefore have occurred at or about this time.

Reference    Pevsner and Hartwell, Lancashire Manchester and the South East page 331.

LISTING TEXT - Shipping and packing warehouse, now restaurant, offices etc. 1914, probably by Birkett; altered. Iron frame with cladding of brown sandstone and some buff brick (roof concealed). Irregular plan at right-angles to street, with chamfered right-hand corner. Free Baroque style. Six storeys with basement and attic, 4 bays (1:1:2:1 windows) plus the corner; with a grey stone plinth, channelled rustication to the first 3 floors, giant Ionic pilasters to the 4th and 5th floors rising from banded pedestals at 3rd floor, those flanking the centre bay coupled and all with festoons, a moulded frieze with large central cartouche, prominent mutuled cornice with a large mutuled segmental pediment arched across the centre of the attic storey, which has a small cornice and interrupted parapet. At ground floor the centre has a doorway and side windows in Venetian window form, with open segmental pediment and cartouche crest, the outer bays have round-headed windows with run-out voussoirs and triple keystones, and the corner has a square-headed doorway with pilaster jambs and carved tympanum under a segmental hood. The 1st and 2nd floors have windows with moulded architraves and cornices, those at 2nd floor on slender consoles with pendent festoons; the windows at 4th and 5th floors also have moulded architraves, those at 4th floor with small cornices; and the attic has a 4 light Diocletian window jn the pediment, and windows in the other bays with keyed architraves and cornices. Interior not inspected. Forms southern end of uninterrupted linear group of similar buildings on this side of Princess Street. Listing NCR: S-18429697579