Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian, Neo-gothic municipal building in Manchester, England. It is the ceremonial headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses a number of local government departments.
Designed by architect Alfred Waterhouse the town hall was completed in 1877. The building occupies a triangular site facing Albert Square and contains offices and grand ceremonial rooms such as the Great Hall which is decorated with the imposing Manchester Murals by Ford Madox Brown illustrating the history of the city. The entrance and Sculpture Hall contain busts and statues of influential figures including Dalton, Joule and Barbirolli. The exterior is dominated by the clock tower which rises to 87 metres (285 feet) and houses Great Abel, the clock bell.
In 1938, a detached Town Hall Extension was completed and is connected by two covered bridges over Lloyd Street. The town hall, which was granted Grade I listed building status on 25 February 1952. It is regarded as one of the finest interpretations of Gothic revival architecture in the world.
Read more about Manchester Town Hall: Architecture, Interior, Town Hall Extension, Reception
Famous quotes containing the words manchester, town and/or hall:
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)