Moorlands House

Moorlands House is an office building dating from 1852-55, with alterations in the 20th century. Designed by W Bruce Gingell, with sculpture by Robert Mawer, it was originally associated with the Leek and Westbourne Building Society and later the Leeds and West Yorkshire Assurance Company. The building is constructed in a richly modelled Venetian palazzo style, using ashlar stone and featuring wrought-iron balconies. The square building occupies a corner site with Albion Street and Commercial Street.

The building is two storeys with an attic and basement, and has three bays. The ground floor exhibits vermiculated rustication, with a heavily rusticated plinth. A round-arched doorway is flanked by Venetian windows set within round-arched recesses, featuring continuous moulded imposts and carved head keyblocks. Retractable metal shutters were originally housed within tracks behind the window arches. A heavy dentil cornice surmounts the ground floor, supporting projecting balconies to the first-floor windows. The first floor has paired Corinthian three-quarter columns supporting a heavy entablature decorated with festoons and masks in the frieze; this entablature projects forward over the columns. Above are three tall windows with segmental pediments on console brackets. Three attic windows are set above, separated by paired pilasters, topped by a cornice and balustraded parapet with urns. The returns to the left and right are similarly designed, but with single (not paired) columns to the first floor.

The interior contains high-quality contemporary details, including Classical plaster doorcases, pilasters, and a moulded entablature. The construction used millstone grit from three quarries: Bramley Fall for the vermiculated plinth, Pool Bank for the finely rusticated ground floor and Venetian windows, and Rawdon Hill for the upper storeys, columns, entablature, and pedimented window heads. This building is considered one of the earliest examples of the new style of commercial architecture in Leeds, predating the Town Hall.