Former Midland Bank -
King Street, Manchester, UK
Architect
|
A collaboration between
Sir Edwin Lutyens and Whinney, Son & Austen
Hall. |
Date Built
|
Designed was in
1928 and completed by 1935 |
Location
|
King Street &
Spring Gardens
|
Description
|
At the top end of
King Street, on an island site between Brown
Street and Spring Gardens, is the former Midland
Bank. Below you can see two stone carvings
on the building. One is the initials of
Midland Bank and the other is the bee hive logo
of the bank.
The building has two angle porches in King
Street. Pevsner describes it as, "a
nearly square block and treated as such, with
the upper motifs identical on all four
sides."......"The banking hall could not be
sky lit, so Lutyens gave it archading on all
four sides and wooden galleries much as in
Wren churches."
Lutyens is well known as the designer of the
city of New Dehli, many of the War Cemeteries in
France and Belgium, and the Cenotaph in
Whitehall, London. He is also famous for
his collaborations with the gardener Gertrude
Jekyll.
In recent years the former Midland Hotel, on
King Street, has been home to HSBC but in August
of 2009 it was empty and "TO LET". Since
then the building has undergone another
refurbishment. Among the new residents of
the building is Jamie Oliver who is about to
open a "Jamie's Italian" restaurant. |
|
