Town Hall Extension

The Town Hall Extension in Manchester was built in 1938 by Vincent Harris. It features a steel frame with sandstone ashlar cladding and a steeply-pitched slate roof. The building has a large, irregular plan with a long concave south side and is designed in an eclectic style with Gothic influences. It stands eight storeys tall with an attic, where the 7th and 8th storeys are set back behind a parapet.

The facade facing Lloyd Street has 29 windows and is connected to the Town Hall by a bridge, while the facade to St Peter's Square has 17 windows, and the Mount Street facade features a contrasting 5 bays. The ground floor of all facades is designed as a plinth with a continuous arcade of simple round-headed openings and a chamfered coping. The upper floors on the Lloyd Street and St Peter's Square facades are divided horizontally by a band above the 1st floor and a parapet above the 5th floor, featuring small rectangular windows up to that level, 2-light mullioned windows on the set-back 6th and 7th floors, and attic dormers with wooden cross-windows and hipped roofs. The last 5 bays of the Lloyd Street facade are set back.

In contrast, the Mount Street facade has five giant oriels from the 2nd to the 5th floors, all rising from a straight band supported by large brackets at the 1st floor, with the 2nd and 4th oriels slightly set back. These oriels are filled with a continuous grid of mullion-and-transom windows, divided by a king mullion and two transoms into pairs of 8, 6, and 4 lights on successive levels. The gable ends of the Mount Street and St Peter's Square wings feature tall stair-turrets with giant round-headed arches containing elaborate geometrically traceried windows. Above each arch is a square-headed niche with a statue, and the top stages are stepped back with bands. At the rear, towards the circular Library building, the wings are linked by a curved four-storey range that has widely spaced round-headed arches and small windows.