26-30, Princess Street

Nos. 26 to 30 on Princess Street in Manchester are offices and warehouses built around 1870-1880, now occupied by various tenants. The building features a sandstone ashlar ground floor and blood-red brick with sandstone dressings above, topped by a steeply-pitched hipped slate roof. It has a rectangular plan situated at the end of a block, with chamfered corners and a loading bay at the rear.

The structure is four storeys high over a basement, presenting a symmetrical 14-window facade. The windows are arranged in a pattern of 1:2:3:3:2:1, with three-light corner oriels. The ground floor has a high chamfered plinth and a plain frieze, while brick pilasters frame the two-window bays, which culminate in tall pilastered chimneys designed to resemble pinnacles. A heavy bracketed cornice sits above the second floor, with a smaller cornice and brick parapet above the third floor.

The two-window bays feature coupled round-headed doorways, although the fourth has been altered to a window. These doorways are richly decorated, with colonnettes that have carved caps supporting large elaborate consoles beneath stilted open pediments, which include carved keystones and swags. The corners of the building have square-headed doorways, each flanked by two semicircular overlights and leading to a cylindrical two-storey oriel above. The windows are sashed without glazing bars, with those in the two and three-light configurations featuring stone mullions, except on the third floor, where the windows have stone panels between the floors. The returned sides of the building are similar in style. This building is part of a continuous row of similar structures along this side of Princess Street.