56-58, PETER STREET (See details for further address information)

SJ8397NE 698-1/31/279

MANCHESTER, PETER STREET (South side), Nos.56-58 (Even)

(Formerly Listed as: PETER STREET Young Men's Christian Association)

21/09/73

GV II

Includes: Nos.14 TO 18 MOUNT STREET. Former club, etc. 1911, by Woodhouse, Corbett and Dean, rebuilt except for the facade 1991-3. Facade of brown and buff terracotta. Free Baroque style with Art Nouveau accent. Five storeys and attic, 5 bays (articulated only above ground floor); heavily banded dark-brown terracotta to ground floor, channelled 1st floor with string-course, festoons to 3rd and 4th floors, massive bracketed cornice over 4th floor, banded attic storey and high parapet. The ground floor has (inter alia) a massive semi-circular arched entrance to the 2nd bay, with run-out banded voussoirs and a scrolled keyblock with roundel above, a large rectangular window to the left and various rectangular windows to the right. On the upper levels the 2nd bay is slightly recessed but with a raised centre which has (inter alia) a reproduction of Donatello's St George in a niche at 3rd floor, and a raised attic storey including a tall niche with a shield under a canted canopy; the 4th bay is also recessed, under a wide segmental arch at attic level, and flanked by canted oriels to the 3rd and 5th bays which rise from 1st floor to attic; the windows at 1st and 2nd floors are small vertical rectangles, but those at 3rd and 4th floors of the 1st, 3rd and 5th bays are treated as vertically continuous slots divided by transoms, while those under the arch of the 4th bay are staggered. History: the first important building in Manchester to be built in re-inforced concrete, and the first major use in Britain of the Kahn reinforced-concrete system; original internal arrangement modelled on New York YMCA.

Listing NGR: SJ8378597908