Ship Canal House King Street Manchester

Ship Canal House, the new headquarters of the Manchester Ship Canal Company, set in the heart of Manchester's financial district was opened in 1927. Five storeys of windows set in a plain stone field was surmounted by a colonnade of coupled columns, the balustrade above crowned with a figure of Neptune. Behind this figure the building was set back and rose again in a plain attic storey to a height of one hundred and forty feet.

At a time when the standard height of Manchester buildings was between sixty and eighty feet, Ship Canal House was effectively Manchester's first skyscraper and was regarded at the time of its completion as a highly significant building. However, this first attempt to emulate the architecture of the United States suffered many weaknesses. The most serious of these was that the building was not designed as a tower to be seen from every direction, but was conceived as a piece of street architecture still with a principal facade.  While the symmetrical elevation to King Street was of stone, cheaper materials were employed on the sides and rear, - a “Queen Anne front and Mary Ann back” according to Reilly. The symmetry of the front too, was soon destroyed as the adjoining Atlas Insurance building crept up its flank.

NOTE    From 1891-1927 the headquarters of the Ship Canal Company had been at 41, Spring Gardens, designed by Alfred Waterhouse.