Former York Road Library And Baths

Former York Road Library and Baths

A public library and baths building constructed in 1903 to designs by HA Chapman for Leeds City Council. The building is executed in ashlar and brick in English and English garden wall bonds, with a graduated Welsh slate roof, and displays Baroque Revival styling.

The structure comprises 2 and 3 storeys across a main elevation to York Road of 10 disparate bays. The ground floor is ashlar with ashlar dressings, parapets and gables with moulded coping; the first floor is brick above a plinth.

From the left, the first bay is 3 storeys high and features a round-arched entrance to the baths with decorative iron gates and a keyed moulded archivolt. Above the archivolt is a plastered panel bearing the words "PUBLIC BATHS". An oriel sits above this entrance, with a corniced 1-light window to its left on these floors, a 4-light window on the second floor, and a segmentally gabled parapet decorated with a motif above.

The second bay, narrower and projecting, is also 3 storeys. It contains a double 6-panel door beneath a corbelled cornice, above which sits an oculus with a console-bracketed and corniced architrave. The first floor has a band and corniced 2-light window. Narrow second-floor windows flank a projecting clock carried on a console bracket. Rising above is a short circular tower flanked by pilasters, featuring continuous wood-mullioned windows and a leaded ogee roof with finial.

The next 6 bays are 2-storey, arranged in two groups of 3 under 2 gables. On the ground floor these bays feature double transomed 2-light windows with keyed and pedimented surrounds. The central bays contain a round-arch entrance with a 6-panel double door, original bronze handles, pilasters supporting a corniced segmental pediment, and a console-bracketed over-panel bearing the words "PUBLIC LIBRARY". The windows on either side have panels decorated with shields bearing authors' names: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and Macaulay. The first floor has 1-light windows in Gibbs surrounds flanking a Venetian window with Ionic colonnettes, cornices and Gibbs-style arches in each section. Each gable contains an arched niche with keystone rising into a pediment.

The two right-hand bays are of 2 storeys, with 3-light windows to the ground floor and 2-light windows above in Gibbs surrounds flanked by pilasters which rise into and above a corniced parapet. A 2-span roof terminates these bays, with corniced stacks at the right end.

The rear elevation is plainer, executed in brick, with opposing gabled sections. The left gable includes a Venetian-style window, whilst the right has an arched first-floor window flanked by flat-headed windows, with double-transomed 2-light windows below.

The interior contains notable contemporary fittings to the library section: old floor mosaic and decorative frieze in the lobby; wooden doors with side lights and fanlights featuring leaded glazing and stained glass; richly treated architraves in the lobby with Ionic-style columns and decorative arches; wall tiles, some patterned, and a cast-iron gallery with decorative brackets in the library; and a coffered ceiling.

The architect HA Chapman also designed Nos 9 and 11 Duncan Street. The building was illustrated and described in The Building News for 9 May 1902, which noted that the ground floor of the library comprised a lending department, news room and ladies' room, with the first floor housing the librarian's room, boys' and girls' reading rooms and similar facilities. The swimming pool measured approximately 23 metres in length, and the building also contained Russian, ladies' and gents' baths.