Warehouse John Dalton Street Manchester

THE WAREHOUSES OF MANCHESTER:—WAREHOUSE IN JOHN DALTON-STREET - The few remaining examples of an old plain brick Warehouse in, here and there, a by-street in Manchester are curious illustrations of the pre-Art epoch in that thriving Commercial and Artistic centre. They are not better in character than the commonest shed that would now be erected in an out-of-the-way village in a Manufacturing district for working artisans. As the business abode of a Merchant, they convey ideas of the most droll nature. It is scarcely possible to realise the fact that within the last fifty years the forefathers of the present Merchants of that city went daily into such unsightly and ignominious places to turn their honest pennies, or finance their nimble nine-pences. If any chronological sequence is required for the style of those old buildings, we should say they are a Georgian debasement of the Queen Anne taste, representing a ghostly stage to which Queen Anne brickwork could no farther go, without being too offensive for even ordinary eyesight. And so we may conclude that they represent—if they represent anything in Architectural ideas— the last effort in that part of the country of an attempt—similar to that in London at the present time—to keep alive Queen Anne and her brick-setters !

The Warehouse—of which we now publish an Illustration—designed by Mr W. H. Brakspear, and erected under his superintendence in the years 1846-47, was the first erected in the new John Dalton-street, and the second in the city of any modern architectural character. In style it remains one of the purest among those that have succeeded it, and in that respect is in marked contrast with the mixed details of Gothic and Classic which are now introduced in the elevations of buildings of the same class. In material it does not possess the attractions common to the more recent warehouses of moulded masonry, carvings, metalwork, and polished granite shafts and strings. It was erected in a transitional period, when stucco was the rage, and gentility was considered to be promoted by covering bricks with cement. The building in consequence has now lost its architectural freshness, at the same time it has not lost its architectural value. The principal front is 95 feet 7 inches in width, occupying the whole space between St. James's Square and Bow-street. The elevation to St. James's Square is of the same character as the principal front, and is 48 feet 3 inches in length. The side to Bow-street is a brick composition, wherein the stone dressings of old buildings that stood upon the same site are introduced. [British Architect 8 May 1874 page 297]

Reference           British Architect 8 May 1874 page 297 and illustration