Dorman Memorial Museum

MIDDLESBROUGH PARK ROAD, NE (4919) south side.

3/60 Dorman Memorial Museum. G.V. II. Museum, 1901/04 by J.M. Bottomley, Son and Welford (Leeds and Middlesbrough). Smooth red brick with terracotta dressings and rusticated quoins. Welsh slate roofs; felt slates on galleries; copper-clad dome. Edwardian Baroque. 2 storeys, 7 bays. Central slightly-projecting 2-storey, l-bay porch. 4 steps, flanked by short balustrades and panelled pedestal piers with ogee caps, lead to 2 sets of part-glazed and panelled double doors and sidelights under frieze with painted raised lettering: "DORMAN MEMORIAL MUSEUM" and wood mullioned-and-transomed lunette with keyed archivolt and enriched spandrels: all in pedimented Ionic doorcase, with arms of Middlesbrough Corporation, and foliage, in tympanum. Sash windows in architraves with sill strings. Keystones and cornices over ground-floor windows. Top entablature and blocking course; hipped roof and corniced end stacks. Squat square central tower, under large octagonal cupola with applied Ionic Order. Narrow round-headed windows in chamfered surrounds, under hoodmoulds and enriched spandrels. Broad-ribbed dome has round pedimented gabled angles and circular ogee-domed lantern with Ionic Order and ball-and-stem finial. Recessed 1-storey, 1-bay wings at ends, fronting exhibition galleries adjoining behind; the right has 4-bay blind round-arcaded return, with blocked lunettes. Left return similar, but partly obscurred by mid-C20 extensions. INTERIOR: entrance hall has tessellated floor with patterned borders and centres. Dogleg staircase has shaped and moulded tread ends, moulded square iron column balusters, fluted column-on-vase newel and moulded wood handrail with bronze spikes. Glazed and panelled doors in wood architraves. Ceiling cornices on both floors. East and west galleries have barrel roofs with steel ribs and purlins, on stone corbels, and wood dentil cornices. Central gallery has octagonal light in octagonal umbrella dome with steel ribs and leaded-glazed lunettes alternating with niches. HISTORY: built in memory of Lieut G.L. Dorman, son of Sir A.J. Dorman (co-founder of Dorman Long Ltd.), killed in South African War. Design resembles that for house in "A Book of Architecture", James Gibbs, 1728, plate 62. Mid C20 extensions are not of special interest.

Listing NGR: NZ4918719060