Manchester House

Manchester House is a shipping and packing warehouse, now used as a restaurant and offices, built in 1914, likely by the architect Birkett, and has been altered over time. The building features an iron frame with cladding of brown sandstone and some buff brick, with the roof concealed. It has an irregular plan that runs at right angles to the street, with a chamfered right-hand corner, and is designed in a Free Baroque style.

The structure stands six storeys tall, with a basement and attic, and consists of four bays arranged as 1:1:2:1 for the windows, plus the corner. The ground floor has a grey stone plinth and channelled rustication for the first three floors. Giant Ionic pilasters rise from banded pedestals at the third floor, flanking the centre bay, which is coupled and adorned with festoons. Above, there is a moulded frieze featuring a large central cartouche, and a prominent mutuled cornice with a large segmental pediment arching across the centre of the attic storey, which includes a small cornice and an interrupted parapet.

On the ground floor, the centre features a doorway and side windows in a Venetian window form, topped with an open segmental pediment and cartouche crest. The outer bays have round-headed windows with run-out voussoirs and triple keystones, while the corner has a square-headed doorway with pilaster jambs and a carved tympanum beneath a segmental hood. The first and second floors have windows with moulded architraves and cornices, with those on the second floor supported by slender consoles and adorned with pendent festoons. The fourth and fifth floors also have windows with moulded architraves, the fourth floor windows featuring small cornices. The attic includes a 4-light Diocletian window in the pediment, with other bays having windows with keyed architraves and cornices. The interior has not been inspected. The building forms the southern end of an uninterrupted linear group of similar structures along this side of Princess Street.