Leeds City Museum

Leeds City Museum

An institute of science and art, now a theatre and college of music. Built between 1865 and 1868 by architect Cuthbert Brodrick, with interior alterations carried out in 1949 and again in 1983. The building is constructed of gritstone ashlar and brick with a slate roof featuring fish-scale slates to the pavilion. Cast-iron details including lamp standards and wrought-iron railings form part of the composition. The design shows Italianate and Second Empire French influences.

The building is rectangular in plan, positioned on a steep slope with the entrance on the long side. It comprises one principal storey over a battered rusticated basement podium. The main front is accessed by steps flanked by low walls with lamps, leading to a large round-arched recessed entrance flanked by pilasters. Above the entrance is a segmental pediment with a carved tympanum bearing the words "THE LEEDS INSTITUTE", surmounted by a pavilion roof. The entrance archway itself is inscribed "CIVIC THEATRE". The facade features twelve segmental-headed windows with round-arched decorated tympana and cast-iron balconies. Roundels appear above each window, with a deep entablature and dentilled cornice running across. Pilasters at the corners and flanking the entrance are surmounted by urns.

The left return (City of Leeds College of Music) is faced in brick with stone dressings to doorways and corner pilasters with sill bands. This section has two storeys with twelve first-floor windows. Access is by steps up to a double board door with an overlight in a pedimented surround positioned below windows three and nine. Four-pane sash windows occur throughout. A railing with bulbous finials to standards and rails encloses this elevation.

The right return features an ashlar facade matching the main front, with twelve arched windows. The high podium contains a doorway below window ten.

The rear elevation is built in brick with stone bands. The circular roof of the lecture hall and theatre features clerestory sash windows with margin lights and a louvred ventilator with pointed finial.

The interior is dominated by a reception area containing Ionic columns in antis with a central flight of stone steps leading up to the theatre entrance. The staircase features twisted cast-iron balusters and a moulded wooden handrail, with a landing balustrade decorated with scrolls and flowers. Flanking straight flights descend to the basement. A carved stone frieze ornaments the staircase walls.

The former lecture hall, now the theatre, is supported by cast-iron columns that also support the gallery. The original scrolled balustrade has been partly removed following the insertion of a proscenium arch in 1949, which was redesigned in 1983. The walls are tiled with flower motifs in blue and green. An elaborate central ceiling ventilator decorated with scrolls and flower bosses dominates the space above, and a restored chandelier hangs in the theatre.

In the basement, the lecture hall floor is supported by a massive central cast-iron column from which fifteen beams radiate out to an outer circle of columns.

Brodrick won the design competition for the Institute in 1860. The original building contained a central lecture hall approximately 22 metres in diameter with seating for 1500, along with a gallery, art studios, and classrooms. By 1905 the Institute housed the Leeds Girls' Modern School, Leeds Boys' Modern School, the School of Art, Technical School, School of Music, and the Commercial Evening School. These were accommodated in the main building and in structures immediately to the east and south-east of it.