Interior
Waterhouse's plan for the town hall bridged the gap between office and ceremonial requirements and maximised space on its triangular site. His design was for a six-storey building which filled the asymmetrical triangular site. Set around its perimeter is a cloister of corridors linking offices and everyday workings. The grandiose, ceremonial features of the town hall are centrally located. By the main entrance on Albert Square are two grand staircases leading to the landing outside the Great Hall. The stairs have low risers allowing access for women in Victorian dress. The walls of the staircases have tall, arched windows admitting daylight. Three spiral staircases accessing the first floor from entrances on Princess Street, Lloyd Street and Cooper Street are constructed in English, Scottish and Irish granite.
In the entrance hall, which has a mosaic glass roof, and ground-floor Sculpture Hall are statues and busts of people who made significant contributions to Manchester, the Anti Corn Law campaigners, Richard Cobden and John Bright, and scientists John Dalton and James Joule among many others.
Read more about this topic: Manchester Town Hall
Famous quotes containing the word interior:
“It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is. You have only to travel for a few days into the interior and back parts even of many of the old States, to come to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The exterior must be joined to the interior to obtain anything from God, that is to say, we must kneel, pray with the lips, and so on, in order that proud man, who would not submit himself to God, may be now subject to the creature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)