The General Post Office - Spring Gardens The General Post office
seen in the image above once stood on Spring
Gardens. It was designed by the architect J
Williams and it was built between 1881 and 1887.
 Pevsner described it as "a tremendous palazzaccio, like a Ministry building in Rome," he made mention of its, "central upper giant portico."  You can see the
building below on my version the 1889 map of the area.
 If you click on the
links below, you can see the inside of the
building. The first one show customers and
staff at the telegraph counter. Unfortunately,
the image is strangely oriented sideways but it is
interesting. The link entitled "Memorial
Statue" shows a statue erected in honour of the men
of Manchester's Post Office who died in World War
One. As you can see, it sat in the centre of
the rather grand main hall.
The memorial was
created by the Manchester sculptor John Ashton
Floyd. It was originally erected in 1929 in the
main hall of the Spring Gardens general post
office. When this building closed in the
1960s, the statue was moved to the new sorting
facility on St. Andrew's Street, behind Piccadilly
Station. Then in 1995 it made its second move to
its present site at the entrance to the Royal Mail
Sorting Depot on Oldham Road. The statue depicts
a group of three figures. Winged Victory is
at the centre, holding a flaming torch. She is
flanked by a young boy and girl and at their feet are
the symbols of war including a helmet and a sword.
  You can see the post office, indicated by a red arrow in the aerial photograph below, dated 1953.  *********************
This wasn't the
first general post office building in the city
centre. The 1845 map shows a post office
occupying part of the site on which the one above
was built. This one faced on to Brown Street.
 Post Office 1866 |