Architecture
A castle-like Art Deco building, surrounded by roads on all four sides, the former bank was built by the engineers Whinney, Son & Austen Hall between 1933 and 1935 and features carvings by the local sculptor John Ashton Floyd. It is constructed of Portland stone around a steel frame. Its neoclassical design is unusual for Manchester, the style perhaps more suited to the architecture of Liverpool, as most of Manchester's buildings were Neogothic.
"The proportions are ingeniously calculated, as Lutyens ... adored to do. The top stage is two-thirds of the stage from the obelisks to the next set-back, and that middle stage is two-thirds of the bottom stage." It is sometimes known as the The King of King Street because of its distinct structure and height.
Read more about this topic: 100 King Street
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
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Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)