42 C O N T E X T 1 3 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 5 in snowcrete, a Portland limestone cement with brilliant white pigment. Arguably the most significant building of the site was the main office, of two principal storeys, 15 bays wide. The windows, rising through the two storeys, amount to an art-deco version of the giant classical order, decorated with that particular, distinct, coppergreen of the window frames. It was a building of pure confidence. The Hoover building had its critics. Contemporary architects called it brash and vulgar. But on the whole the public liked it. It was seen as a sign of the times, a progressive marching forward which was all to do with leaving the Great War as far behind as possible and starting afresh. Since it represented hope, there is the feeling that, rather than being objective or apathetic, the public actually wanted prestige architecture to work at this point in time. They wanted signs of new growth and development, and there was a willingness to back such grandiose efforts. The Hoover Building’s designer called its style ‘fancy’, not ‘art-deco’ as we might call it today. It was certainly a product of its time, showing the growing influence of Egyptian symbols on architectural detailing following the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter in 1923. Some of today’s architecture critics have slated the Hoover building, mainly for its lack of detail when seen close up. But this is to misunderstand the building entirely. It was not designed to be seen close up but to be viewed from afar from the cars of the wealthy as they drove past, perhaps taking a second glance in their rear-view mirrors. From this viewpoint its opulence still works very well. The mystery behind the Hoover building’s designer highlights the contemporary desire for optimism, and for life to be bigger and better than the reality.Wallis, Gilbert and Partners designed the Hoover Building – or did they? There is no evidence that there ever was a ‘Gilbert’ at Wallis, Gilbert and Partners. It has been suggested that his anonymous colleagues were invented by Thomas Wallis to make his practice sound larger and more successful than it was.Wallis too may have been cashing in on the public’s craving for success. From a commercial building in the south we turn to a municipal building in the north: Manchester Town Hall. This magnificent feat of architecture was designed to be the great ceremonial headquarters of what was then Manchester Corporation and the public body that planned the structure in 1863. AlfredWaterhouse’s gothic revival dream of a building contains great ceremonial rooms as well as offices, all highly decorated and running over with symbolism depicting the glorifying of a successful Manchester both then and in the past. This Grade I building was completed in 1877. It was opened by Mayor Abel Heywood, who had championed the project. Queen Victoria (still deep in mourning) refused to attend the opening ceremony, but this did not tarnish the success of the ceremony nor affect the self-congratulatory splendour of the final building. Manchester Corporation had demanded that its building be ‘equal if not superior to any similar building in the country at any cost which may reasonably be required’. Nine years later, at a cost of (in today’s money) around £70 million, and after the use of 14 million bricks, it could certainly have been said that Manchester Corporation had achieved its objective. The choice of a gothic style was an embracing of modernity and progress, demonstrating how far industrial Manchester had come. It also provided a stark contrast to the architectural choices of rival industrial city, Liverpool, which had mainly stayed with classicism as its form of architectural identity. However, even this confident architectural piece, which selfaggrandised the corporation and promoted the whole city, was subject to criticism from its own inhabitants. The exterior of Waterhouse’s Town Hall was designed with limits on its external modelling and carving.Waterhouse had selected a monochrome stone finish (Spinkwell stone) and the building displayed no polychromy at all. At the time this seemed unnecessarily restrained and contrary to the highest flights of fancy that gothic architecture had reached elsewhere. People were disappointed and claimed that the building was not gothic enough. The reason for this restraint was the ‘peculiar climate of Manchester’, as Waterhouse put it. He knew that any polychromy would fast be lost beneath the layers of soot that coated other city buildings, and that the more carving and modelling the building had, the more it would attract soot. His choice of the Spinkwell stone was an intelligent one since, as he predicted, the building was soon blackened. Contemporary accounts put this as being as early as the 1890s. The Spinkwell stoneWaterhouse had chosen was durable enough to resist some of the decay that this blackening caused and also to withstand the cleaning that the building would require later.Waterhouse was planning for the future of his masterpiece. Those city residents who were aware of Waterhouse’s reasons for his careful design criticised the corporation for spending such an enormous sum on a building whose architectural effect would be ruined by soot and would anyway be largely invisible due to the perpetual smoke that existed in Manchester’s industrial heart. Despite these views, when the building was completed, contemporary architecture critics seemed to love the building. John Ruskin described the Great Hall as ‘the most truly magnificent Gothic apartment in Europe’. It seems that prestige architecture has always and will always have its critics. The level of this depends on a plethora of factors, including whether the building is a public one or a private one, the starchitect status (or not) of its designer, the sum being spent and the final design of a project. Future prestige projects can perhaps learn from, and avoid, the pitfalls of past ones. For example, not building on green space that has been set aside for the public would seem a good lesson to take from the Ak Saray project. On final analysis, however, it seems that criticism has always been part of the prestige architecture story.What is a little criticism when an inspiring architectural legacy remains? Carole Fry, a director of AHC Consultants, freelance writer and architectural historian Manchester Town Hall (Photo: Mark Andrew)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=