The Exchange Building once stood on the corner of Deansgate and St. Mary's Gate.  In the photograph below you can see the Exchange Building, with its grand arched entrance, on the left of the image.  You can see the Wards Building on the right of the image with Barrs Toy Shop at street level.

The two buildings offered offices on the upper floors and street level shopping.  There were more shops and a restaurant in the L-shaped Exchange Arcade.  The arched entrance led into the arcade, seen in the image below shown with the permission of English Heritage.

After WWII the site was a bombsite and it sat like that for a number of years.  The arrow in the image below points to the location.  It became Manchester's version of Speakers Corner so when it was redeveloped in the 1960s as the site of an office & retail building it was called "Speaker's House".

Speakers House was designed by the architectural practice of Douglas Stephen & Partners it was built in 1963.  It is described as "Concrete framed of seven storeys over a two storey coarse aggregate and brick podium.