Mersey Docks & Harbour Board Offices, Pier Head, Liverpool

Built at the height of the port's international importance, a spectacular statement of Edwardian confidence in Liverpool.  At this time, Liverpool was the second most important port of the Empire and it was from this building that the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board ran the entire dock system. The facade has eleven bays with three steep pediments, two semi-circular, the middle one triangular. The four angle bays of the building are polygonal and carry cupolas, formerly with high lanterns. The top storey of the building is post-war. Over the centre a big copper covered dome on a high drum. The centre is an octagonal hall reaching up to the dome. It has arched galleries on four levels, the second and third pulled together. The building, taking it all in all, is more conventional than the Royal Liver and the buildings by Doyle. [Pevsner: South Lancashire Page 176]

The first of the three buildings which form the Pier Head group. An impressive pile of Portland stone: the base, Italian, the superstructure a giant Classical church dome supported by a cluster of little domes. We have grown so used to buildings that perhaps, in our own day, we overlook the underlying symbolism of this form of architectural expression. Could it be that the architect intended the implication that those who worked there combined the business acumen of the Florentine bankers with the sanctity of the Church, a Renaissance merchant's palace with the dome of St Peter's perched on top? The Corporation intended that the adjoining site be developed in a similar manner, but the wily lawyers of the Royal Liver Insurance Society circumscribed the clause allowing their architect the freedom of design which he was to exploit in that most original of structures, the Royal Liver Building. How fortunate was this step, for it has given Liverpool its characteristic skyline and its best known group of buildings. One Mersey Docks and Harbour Board building is splendid, two would have been unutterably boring! [Quentin Hughes : Liverpool City of Architecture]

Arnold Thornely, had finished the Bluecoat School in Wavertree a year earlier. His partners Briggs and Wolstenholme, along with F.B. Hobbs, were also involved although it is Thornley who must take the credit. The dome from this magnificent structure is thought to have been inspired by a Professor Reilly design for the Anglican Cathedral in 1902.[Quentin Hughes : Seaport]

Built on the site of the former George's Dock.