Numbers 16-20 Including Leeds Library (18)

Numbers 16-20 Commercial Street, including Leeds Library at Number 18, Leeds

This is a private library premises above shops, built in 1808 by Thomas Johnson. The building underwent significant alterations between 1821 and 1836 by Robert Dennis Chantrell, with a new entrance and additional room added by Thomas Ambler in 1879-1881, and further alterations around 1900.

The building is constructed in Greek Revival style with three storeys and a basement. The ground floor features a rusticated arcaded design with five segmental arches divided by piers, the central archway providing access to the library entrance hall. Above each pier stands an Ionic pilaster extending through two storeys and supporting an entablature with a heavy eaves cornice and blocking course. The first floor contains six tall 24-pane sash windows with glazing bars, fitted with moulded architraves, moulded cornices and panelled sills. The second floor has five square 12-pane sashes in moulded architraves. A narrow round-arch passageway on the left side has a tall narrow sash window above.

The entrance hall on the ground floor of Number 18 contains a tiled floor, reception desk and book lift, with a basement staircase of three straight flights featuring a cast-iron balustrade of scrolled openwork panels, wooden handrail and brass lamp base. The walls are lined with black and yellow tiling (approved in 1881). The first-floor level is marked by fine plasterwork frieze with niches, pilasters and impost moulding, banded rustication to the walls, a decorative frieze alternating plaques with squat pilasters, and a coved ceiling with lantern.

The original library room of 1808 opens through glazed double doors with flanking lights designed by Ambler. The walls are lined with probably original shelving featuring fluted pilasters to the casing, with later shelving inserted above. A blocked west door is shelved on both sides (added in 1881), and some free-standing shelving units have wheels and may be original. The ceiling features a reeded moulding cornice.

The gallery extends across the east, north and west sides. The east side and spiral stair feature cast-iron balustrading of slender rails and semicircles by Robert Dennis Chantrell (1821). The north and west galleries date to 1836 by the same architect, with carpentry by Norton and Shuttleworth (including wooden brackets supporting the north wall gallery) and ironwork by T Nelson. Two 'sunlight' gaslight fittings with large reflector plates and ventilators (supplied by the Leeds New Gas Company in 1853) represent a rare survival. Extra shelving was installed in 1870, including spaces above the gallery windows. The staff counter has panelled sides and curved corners and probably predates the 1880 reordering. A west spiral stair was added in 1990.

The second-floor 'Smoke Room' (formerly the Bindery) contains shelving with similar moulding to the main room. The New Room to the north, added by Ambler, runs parallel to the original library room and includes a Committee room and librarian's office at the east end, with a book hoist and stone stair from the basement at the west. Original features include shelving, panelled doors, and a marble fireplace and fittings to the librarian's office, which retains a coved ceiling with egg-and-dart moulding (partly removed when the gallery was installed in 1900). The ironwork features scrolled and wavy rails with spiked ball finials by James Allen and Son. Original stairs were replaced in 1906 by a wooden stair with fine turned columns on vase-style balusters with ball finials.

The basement book store beneath the early 19th-century front range contains stone walls with arches supporting the projection beneath the street. A doorway and window with side-sliding sash on the north may be the original entrance to one of a row of basement houses serving the rear of the ground-floor shops. Timber cross beams support the floor. The warehouse and upper New Room range feature fireproof floor construction. The original roof structure is visible at the west end, while the outer roof structure of the New Room comprises cast-iron with tension straps and copper wires fastening the slates.

The Leeds Library was founded in 1768 behind Joseph Ogle's bookshop in Kirkgate, with Joseph Priestley as its first secretary and second president. The books transferred in 1781 to the former town house of Sir James and Sir Henry Ibbetson, also in Kirkgate. In 1806 it was decided to purchase the plot in "the new road about to be constructed from Briggate to Albion Street" where the present building stands. The library retains its important archive relating to its history, building plans and construction.