Parsonage Chambers, 3, The Parsonage, Manchester

Parsonage Chambers is a new type of building for Manchester, being practically all glass in front – a much discussed five storeys of windows. [Manchester Guardian 19 March 1926 page 5]

The Parsonage Chambers, occupying the second block in the Parsonage, counting from Blackfriars-street, includes many novel features both in construction and internal layout. Built five storeys high, to utilise as fully as local regulations allow the high value of the site, the Chambers have for their lowest floor a semi-basement containing exceptionally lofty rooms half below ground level and half above; this latter half of the wall space being entirely of glass. This floor is being fitted out as a high-class café-restaurant, open to the public, of course, but especially convenient to the tenants of the offices and office suites above. The entire design of the Parsonage Chambers is rigidly mathematical, a neat oblong construction presenting a dignified exterior appearance. Each of the five floors is laid out with exact similarity so that it is impossible to distinguish one from another on a casual visit. Each is fitted into two rows of offices divided by a corridor and the arrangement is so effected that, while half the offices are larger than the other half, an equal number of each face the Parsonage itself. How this is done is best explained by a description of the interior. There is only one entrance, at the corner facing Blackfriars-street, and a few steps lead up to the first floor immediately, though the spacious lift is advisable for the higher floors. Reaching the first floor, a corridor runs from the staircase in a straight line, with large offices opening from it on the right, facing the Parsonage, and small offices on the left. Half way the corridor branches abruptly to the right, and then continues as before, but this time the offices are on the left.

The remaining floors are an exact replica of the first. It is noteworthy that the staircase, though necessarily limited in space, is not built in the irritating circular spiral, which produces those absurd steps at the bends that narrow to an inch and a half, and are the cause of numerous accidents annually in our old-fashioned buildings. The steps here are a solid oblong, and a solid oblong they remain at the bends as everywhere else. Mr. Charles Swain, the architect, who has done so much local planning, gives in the Parsonage Chambers yet another proof of his keen practical sense and mastery of the art of commercial planning. In every detail the building is right up to the moment; in its extra-large window space, giving the front of the building a delightfully cool and spacious appearance; in the employment of steel-frame windows, which do not warp, blister or decay, as did the old wooden frames; in the flooring of patterned wood blocks; in the multiplicity of sanitary provision, including washing accommodation on every floor, and in a hundred and one similar details that pass by the layman, but earn the admiration of those who understand the difficult problems that face the architect of buildings of this kind. The Chambers are therefore a god example of the new type of commercial building, made for work, light and cool, with none of the unwieldiness, the eccentricity and the rickety ornamentation of the past. Most of the offices are already taken up; some were booked, in fact, long before the building was begun. When the remainder of the new Parsonage schemes are completed the area promises to become an important centre in the city area, and it is a significant fact that a large restaurant should be acquired so early as the one in the Parsonage Chambers, for this pre-supposes a larger commercial clientele than has up to now probably been available here.

Reference    Manchester City News Saturday 26 July 1924 Page 8
Reference    Manchester Guardian 19 March 1926 page 5