Author: modernmoocher

On leaving the railway station turn right – there’s and enormous social housing tower block named Elizabeth House.

Architect: John Middleton 1976-79.

Next door a noisy neighbour the former British Telecom – St George’s Tower now Premier Inn with its newly acquired cladding of many colours.

Next to City Hall architects: Barnish and Silcock 1938- the modest opening ceremony took place on 7th November 1938.

Once home to the Electricity Board Sowrooms specially furnished with a model kitchen for housewives who are interested in the modern uses of electricity in the home. A special theatre also presented weekly cookery demonstrations and a Service Centre displayed, sold and hired out electrical appliances.

Opposite City Hall the former Assurance Insurance HQ now Ramada Hotel.

Adjacent Halford House – former Leicester Temperance Building Society.

It was partly occupied by the firm of architects who built it in 1955-1959, Pick Everard Keay and Gimson. 

Look out for the concrete planters known as Beckett’s Buckets – named for John Leslie Beckett, Leicester’s City Engineer and Surveyor 1941–64.

Lewis’s Tower on Humberstone Gate is all that remains of this Art Deco department store.

Up around the bend to the Curve Theatre Opened in 2008 by Her Majesty The Queen, designed by acclaimed architect Rafael Viñoly.

Originally designed and built in 1936 in the Streamline Moderne style by Robert Arthur Bullivant, and operated as an Odeon Cinema. The terracotta panels, which feature mermaids, were hand-moulded by William Neatby at the Lambeth premises of Doulton and Co.

The cinema was opened on 28th July 1938 with a screening of A Slight Case of Murder.

Grade II Listed August 1997 – the building has been restored and converted into a venue for corporate and social events renamed ATHENA.

Onward now to the Pfister & Vogle Warehouse – built in 1923 architects: Fosbrooke and Bedingfield for the Milwaukee based leather manufacturers.

A sprawling complex of tower and outlying buildings.

No longer taking calls the Wharf Street Post Office and Telephone Exchange.

On 11 December 1959, the United Kingdom’s first drive-in post office opened. It was situated at the new Wharf Street Branch Post Office under the centre archway of the Wharf Street Telephone Exchange building in Leicester, which had a private road running through it.

Despite being announced in a burst of fanfare, the drive-in post office was ultimately considered to be a failure. From the initial 60 to 70 customers a day, this fell to 20 to 25 a day and, by 1963, the number of customers had tailed off to three per day and even this was not always maintained.

Postal Museum

Let’s carry on and park it in the Auto-Magic Lee Circle Car Park.

Much beloved of Sid James.

One of the oldest multi-storey car parks in Europe. When it opened in 1961, providing space for 1050 cars, it was also among the first automated public car parks, using coin-operated barriers. Beneath the six parking levels, the supermarket chain Tesco opened their first store outside London. Tesco was integrated with the car park above so that staff could take customers’ purchases direct to their cars. For some years the new supermarket featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest store by floor area in Europe.

The opening of the Leicester Tesco was a landmark event in the history of UK retailing and marked the beginning of self-service shopping, with customers required to use one of the company’s baskets or trolleys. A crowd of 2,000 gathered to see the opening of the store by ‘Carry On’ comedian Sid James in the presence of Sir Jack Cohen, founder of Tesco stores, who helped to pack bags at the check-outs. This was the first ‘discount store’ opened by Tesco.

Story of Leicester

Leicester Progressive Spiritualist Church

Epic House architects: Andrews, Emmerson & Sherlock 1963-1967

Formerly home to the UK’s first local radio station.

Crown House home to the Benefits Agency and County Court in the 1970’s

Let’s take a look at the Corah St Margaret’s Works – currently not working.

Corah was established by Nathaniel Corah, who began buying hosiery in Leicester to sell in Birmingham in 1815. The first extension was in 1882, when the company was the first in Leicester to introduce electric lighting to a factory. 

At the outbreak of World War II Corah had 4,500 employees but over half of that number left to join the Services or undertake war work.  Regardless of the reduced workforce the company produced 26 million knitted items for the government and processed around 250 million clothing coupons.  The engineering department was also extended to allow for the production of 80,000 gun parts and 30,000 parts for tank landing craft.

Despite all the innovation, good working practices, quality products and special relationship with Marks and Spencer, Corah was acquired by Coats Viyella in 1994.  The company was soon broken up and the St Margaret’s Works site closed within a decade.

Story of Leicester

The remains of the old Corah factory in Leicester city centre could be almost entirely demolished to make way for hundreds of 1,187 new homes.

Leicester Mercury

However here comes the cavalry:

C20 Society has joined Historic England and Leicester Civic Society in condemning plans to demolish the former Corah Factory, at the St Margaret’s Works site in the East Midlands city.

Way back in 1972 the nation thought fit to celebrate its Modern University Buildings, rightly so, as many campuses represented the very best of the era’s architecture.

Leicester was foremost in this innovative use of C20 constructions.

Attenborough Tower

The Attenborough Building is the tallest building on the campus, and houses arts and humanities departments.

The building comprises three distinct elements: an 18-storey tower block containing 270 offices and tutorial rooms; a low-rise building, known within the University as the Attenborough Seminar Block, containing seminar rooms and computing facilities; and an underground area housing two large lecture theatres and the University Film Theatre.

It was designed by Arup Associates and constructed between 1968 and 1970, with Ove Arup as the chief engineers.

The university’s development plan at the time called for two other similar towers, but these were never built.

The building was named after Frederick Attenborough, who was principal of the then University College from 1932 until 1951, and father of Richard and David Attenborough. By the time of the opening ceremony Frederick was elderly and frail, so the building was opened on his behalf by his youngest son John.

Wikipedia

Engineering Building

Opened in 1963 and widely regarded as one of the most architecturally important buildings of its era, the Engineering Building at Leicester is utterly distinctive.

Between them, architects James Gowan and James Stirling, plus engineer Frank Newby, created a unique piece of modern architecture designed around both the specific needs of the Engineering Department.

Atop the two cantilevered lecture theatres sit two joined towers containing labs and offices, their design inspired by the superstructure of an aircraft carrier. The rippling ‘waves’ of the two large glass roofs, angled at 45 degrees to the towers, face north to provide illumination without direct sunlight – which could affect delicate instruments.

There are actually two types of glass in the roof: translucent ply-glass with an inner layer of fibreglass, and opaque glass coated with aluminium. The distinction between the two only becomes noticeable at night when the building is illuminated.

The building’s walls are constructed of red Accrington brick and red Dutch tiles. Atop the taller tower is a water tank to provide hydraulic pressure, while the corner of the shorter tower is cambered to avoid overhanging part of Victoria Park. Within the ground floor workshop space, which is partitionable to provide flexibility, the floor is a series of concrete slabs that can be removed to provide foundations for machinery as required.

Visually stunning it may be, practical too, but the complexity of its design makes the Engineering Building very difficult – and hence expensive to keep in good repair, a situation exacerbated by the restrictions of its Grade II* listing.

Leicester University

Like Kahn at Philadelphia or Rudolph in New Haven, Stirling and Gowan at Leicester have given future architects and building committees a qualitative solution that can form a challenge for future efforts. They were not, themselves, forced into the strait-jacket of a local modernist cliché that was already established on the far side of the campus, and they refrained from setting up a rival one on their own quarter of the site-one which would have only required undoing at some future time. Instead, the architects addressed themselves to the immediate demands of the programme with devotion and respect.

Architectural Review 1963

Charles Wilson Building

Sir Charles Haynes Wilson was a Scottish political scientist and university administrator. As Principal of University College Leicester, he led the institution to university status in 1957 and served as the first Vice-Chancellor of the new University of Leicester, before becoming Principal of the University of Glasgow in 1961.

The building was designed by Sir Denys Lasdun in the brutalist style, and completed in 1963.

It is Category B listed. 

It is the university’s main social and catering building, and is licensed as a venue for civil weddings and civil partnerships.

A walk from the Cosmos to a sculptural wall via the sun.

Apart from the establishment of the now defunct AIR index of artists, recently revamped by the ACGB, both of which were ill-tended to help foster and promote private and public commissions, no moves have yet been made towards Percentage for Art legislation or even towards the creation of informal schemes.

Art Quest UK

We are taking a stroll through work commissioned in the main by Schools, Colleges and Universities.

American born, living in Didsbury, Cunliffe developed a technique for mass-producing abstract designs in relief in concrete, as architectural decoration, which she described as sculpture by the yard.

This example of modular fibre glass panels named Cosmos, is set in the wall of the student halls of residence in Owens Park – a BDP designed tower block.

Modelled by hand, they were manufactured in a Lancashire plastics factory.

Her Trellis concrete reliefs can be seen adorning WH Smiths in Macclesfield.

Here in Grimsby

And the extension to Parklands Hotel in Collyhurst Manchester

Also this Slough example is visible in the opening title sequence of the BBCs hit TV show The Office.

Over the road to the Manchester High School For Girls where we find Mitzi Cunliffe’s carving in Portland Stone, entitled Threshold – unveiled September 30th 1953

Panel One – Britain’s Past

Panel Two – Companionship

Panel Three – Growth

The work embodied a sense of renewal, following the school’s travails of the 1940s.

Also reinforcing the continuing need for educational establishments to own and display living works of art, a need exemplified by the Pictures for Schools movement.

Returning to Wilmslow road a digression to a Concrete Totem by William Mitchell

Formed in clay then cast in concrete, one of four produced for Manchester Corporation.

Next stop Whitworth Park – a cornucopia of contemporary sculpture.

Hippocratic Tree 2015 – Christine Borland

A reproduction of the man-made steel skeleton of supports that now sustains Hippocrates’ tree on the Island of Kos – the tree beneath which Hippocrates first taught medicine.

Phalanx 1977 – Michael Lyons

The Whitworth Park Obelisk  2011 – Cyprien Galliard

The obelisk is made from the crushed brick and concrete of demolished housing in nearby Moss Side and Hulme.

Tree 2015 – Anya Gallaccio

Gallaccio’s new sculptural commission reinstates a missing tree in stainless steel, appearing as a ghostly negative form.

Bending 2017 – Raqs Media Collective

Bending distorts the form of European imperial sculpture, raises questions about commemoration and colonialism. The quotations on the three plaques are taken from George Orwell’s essay – Shooting the Elephant.

Coronation Park refers to a park on the outskirts of New Delhi that hosted mass rallies organised by the British Raj, celebrating the coronation of British monarchs as rulers of India and where Indian subjects were expected to demonstrate deference to their colonial oppressors. Britain withdrew from India in 1947, yet monuments to British rulers remained. In the 1960s, these were removed from New Delhi and relocated to Coronation Park. Today, they stand in disrepair and decay. Once symbolising an oppressive history, their power has been allowed to deteriorate.

Big Issue Leanne Green

Terminal and Untitled 1964 – Bernard Schottlander

On display at the Whitworth is Hans Tisdall’s tapestry – a partner to his mosaics, commissioned for the ChemistryBuilding at UMIST and currently on loan to the gallery.

At the Royal Northern College of Music there was once a wall hanging in the main auditorium, removed during the recent refurbishment.

This is the work of Elda Abramson, assisted by many local hands and a year in the making 1977.

I have been unable to ascertain wether it will be reinstated.

Up the road now to the Stopford Building 1972 – topped with an Anthony Holloway trim, formed from repeated cast concrete modular panels.

His work in Manchester is in the main the result of his relationship with architect Harry Fairhurst.

Working as a consultant designer with the architects’ division of the London County Council. He learned how to deal with architects and builders, and became adept at getting as much out of the money available – never enough – for his projects. He remained linked with what became the Greater London Council’s architects department until its closure in 1968.

Over the road the Ellen Wilkinson Building – BDP 1964 covered with William Mitchell concrete panels.

Hiding behind the building a not so secret secret garden with a mysterious concrete sculpture – no attribution available.

Next to the Schuster Building 1967 – Harry Fairhurst and the recently restored and reinstated The Alchemist’s Elements 1967 by Hans Tisdall.

Formerly sited in the alcoves at the since demolished Faraday Building.

For a number of years stored outside on the UMIST site The Mosaic Restoration Company are to be applauded for their diligence and skill.

Across the way it’s Hans Tisdall again – a work always known to me as the Four Seasons 1964.

Four circular mixed media panels intersected by the café wall – built into the Chemistry Building another Fairhurst work.

This work he undertook for Edinburgh Weavers echoes these forms.

Were you to visit on a weekday you could view the mosaic tucked away inside the Schuster Building.

John D Green was chosen by the architect to design this mosaic.

High atop the lecture theatre an abstract sculpture by Michael Piper.

Back to Oxford Road and possibly my favourite local work of public art Manchester Sun 1963 – Lynn Chadwick.

He received Carborundum Company’s Sculpture Major and Minor Awards to produce circular sculpture in fibreglass, Manchester Sun for the University of Manchester’s Williamson Building.

Also available in an edition of two 24″ diameter fibre glass maquettes.

Walking toward town and we encounter the Anamorphic Mirrors 1989 – Andrew Crompton, regionally sited outside MOSI Lowe Byron Street. They were intense to reflect the images of John Dalton, James Joule, Henry Rutherford and Bernard Lovell formed in paving slabs by concrete artists Richard and Jack Doyle.

This context is now lost.

Leaving Oxford Road and heading for the former UMIST site we pass under the Mancunian Way – with its 1968 Concrete Society Award.

Around the corner and the towering Faraday Building 1967 tower, towers over us – HS Fairhust & Son clad in Anthony Holloway cast concrete panels.

Complemented by his concrete banding on the adjacent building.

Inside the lobby of the recently listed Renold Building – Victor Pasmore’s 1968 Metamorphosis.

Which finds an almost near relative in Antony Holloway’s 1968 Concrete Wall – which is also listed.