Art Gallery And Library

The Art Gallery and Library, built between 1899 and 1901 by Woodhouse and Willoughby of Manchester, is located at the corner with Moss Street. It is designed in a free classical style, featuring ashlar stone on the main fronts. The building is mostly two storeys high, with a basement behind a plain coped parapet. The ground floor is marked by an order of unfluted Ionic columns, with an entablature that projects forward over each column.

On the symmetrical Silver Street front, there are no columns at the re-entrant corners. The first floor features pairs of modified unfluted Doric columns framing the central part of each advanced end section, above which is a third order framing pedimented sedicules that provide gable terminations to the pitched roofs. The entrance, which has a triple arch, is topped with a cartouche flanked by standing female figures and balustrading. Each bay of the advanced sections on the ground floor has three large windows, while the first floor has no windows but includes a bas-relief frieze of crowded figures.

The Moss Street front is similar but features only one three-tier order, with the lowest tier forming a three-bay portico that serves as the entrance to the Art Gallery and Museum. Balustrading is present over the first storey entablature between the sedicules on both fronts. The building was constructed as a condition of the gift of the Wrigley Collection of paintings.