Former Liverpool Airport Control Tower And Terminal

Former Liverpool Airport Control Tower and Terminal

This former airport terminal building and control tower, now converted to hotel use, was built between 1937 and 1940 to designs by E.H. Bloomfield of the Liverpool Corporation's Land Steward and Surveyor's office. It is constructed with a steel and cast iron structural frame, brown brick walling, and concrete and stone dressings in a linear Art Deco style.

The building was conceived as the central component of a three-part ensemble for the new Liverpool municipal airport. Its plan comprises curved arms flanking a central control tower, with a projecting central block behind. The tower itself rises 7 storeys, with a circular lower section that becomes hexagonal in the major part of the tall glazed upper section. The terminal building consists mainly of 2 and 3 storey flat-roofed sections arranged in stepped configuration, rising to 5 storeys at the rear of the tower.

The flying field elevation facing south presents generous window provision with concrete storey bands and shallow bands at window head and cill levels. The ground floor features a projecting gallery with rounded ends, flanked by 8-bay ranges of 3 storeys. The 10-bay outer ranges also have rounded ends. The landside rear elevation, now largely obscured by a 2002 extension for hotel accommodation, originally featured circular stair towers flanking the entrance. The exterior has been extensively repaired with replacement window and door frames of 21st-century design but similar appearance. The interior has been comprehensively remodelled for 21st-century hotel facilities with radical plan modifications, although original staircases remain.

The design of Speke Airport and its terminal building was closely modelled on Hamburg's Fuhlsbuttel Airport of 1931 by Bryssen and Avershoff. Following a fact-finding visit by the City Council in 1934 to European airports in Berlin, Hamburg and Amsterdam, the City's Land Steward and Surveyor was instructed to submit plans based on the Fuhlsbuttel design. Approved in 1935, construction began on the terminal and Hangar No. 1. The control tower was completed as a free-standing structure first, and the completed building with its adjacent hangar was officially opened on 11 June 1937.

The building underwent extension and comprehensive repair and refurbishment by The Speke-Garston Development Company between 1999 and 2001 and now operates as a hotel.

It forms a group with the former Liverpool Airport International Terminal (former Hangar 2) and the former Liverpool Airport Hangar No. 1.