Midland Hotel

The Midland Hotel is a large hotel constructed between 1898 and 1903, designed by Charles Trubshaw for the Midland Railway Company, and subsequently altered. It is a steel-framed building, faced with brown polished granite, red brick, and extensive buff and brown glazed terracotta, with the roof not visible. The building occupies an island site and has an irregular pentagonal plan. It is designed in an elaborate eclectic Baroque style.

The hotel has five diminishing storeys, including cellars and attics. The principal facade to Peter Street consists of 2:4:2 bays, symmetrical, with a slightly canted 3-bay portion to the left and 3-sided corners at both ends. The paired bays are characterized by fenestrated 3-sided pilasters that finish as turrets, surmounted by elaborate attic gables. There is a cornice and balustraded parapet above the ground floor, giant round-headed arches to the next three floors, small coupled round-headed arches to the fourth floor, a bracketed cornice and pierced parapet, and gabled attic dormers over the centre.

The ground floor, constructed of polished granite, features a recessed central entrance under two massive semi-circular arches, reminiscent of the shipping holes of nearby canal warehouses. A roundel between the arches contains a wyvern, and a convex frieze above bears raised lettering "MIDLAND HOTEL." Coupled round-headed arches to the outer bays contain terracotta mullion-and-transom windows, with bowed wrought-iron railings in an Art Nouveau style protecting the basement areas below. The upper-floor windows are largely coupled, with round-headed windows on the third and fourth floors; all have wrought-iron balcony railings and extensive terracotta enrichment.

The canted portion to the left, and the longer side walls to Lower Mosley Street and Mount Street, are in a generaling similar style. Lower Mosley Street has segmental curved balconies to the first floor and bow-shaped balconies to the second floor. The rear facade has domed corner turrets.

Originally, the hotel contained a palm court, concert hall, winter gardens, Russian and Turkish baths, a roof garden, 23 lifts, approximately three and a half miles of corridors, and 400 bedrooms. The ground floor has been altered, and the upper floors were not inspected at the time of listing. The Midland Hotel is a prominent and significant building, reflective of the cosmopolitan wealth and taste of late 19th century Manchester, and it represents an early example of a steel-framed building.