Council House, Exchange Buildings and adjoining shops and bank

Council House, Exchange Buildings and adjoining shops and bank, forming a rectangular island block on the east side of Old Market Square. Built 1924-29, with the bank completed in 1927. Designed by T. Cecil Howitt for Nottingham City Council; the bank was designed by A. N. Bromley of Nottingham for the National Provincial Bank. Sculptural decoration by Joseph Else and mural paintings by Denholm Davis with collaborators.

CONSTRUCTION AND MATERIALS

Steel frame with Portland stone cladding and dressings, lead roofs. The adjoining corner block to the south-east (dated 1922) is ashlar in stripped Classical style. The bank is ashlar in Baroque Revival style.

EXTERIOR

The main Council House complex is in the Baroque Revival style with four storeys and nine bays. The principal west front has a projecting centre of seven bays approached by steps flanked by stone lions, with round-arched ground floor openings and four bronze bracket lamps. Above rises an octastyle Ionic portico in antis, extending through three floors and topped with a pediment containing relief sculpture. The portico frames regular fenestration with metal-framed glazing bar casements. Blank end bays flank the centre, each with round-arched ground floor openings. Rising above the centre is a drum with Ionic colonnades and sculptural groups in niches at the four corners, surmounted by a large lead dome topped with an ornate cupola.

The right and left returns are identical, each featuring a projecting central round-arched entrance rising through four floors, with five-bay facades divided by Doric pilasters. The upper three floors are divided by Ionic three-quarter columns in antis, with regular fenestration above renewed shop fronts. The right return has an additional single entrance bay towards the rear. The rear facade to the east has a central round-arched opening rising through three floors with Ionic columns in antis under a pediment, flanked by single bays with pendant lamps and round-arched ground floor openings.

The building has a granite plinth with channelled rustication to the ground floor, a dentillated main cornice, and pierced balustrade. Windows are mainly glazing bar casements with bronze frames and panels.

EXCHANGE ARCADE

The arcade features a glazed dome at its crossing with paintings of historical scenes on the pendentives. A lengthy inscription frieze is dated 1929. The main east-west arcade has five bays with renewed shop fronts divided by square pilasters and, above, tripartite windows with moulded surrounds also divided by pilasters. To the east is a narrower, lower four-bay arcade defined by a stone arch, with cross casements in moulded surrounds; the eastern bay is three storeys with two windows on each floor. The shorter north and south arcades have large transomed windows.

ADJOINING CORNER BLOCK

The adjoining corner block to the south-east (dated 1922) is in stripped Classical style. Four storeys; 5 by 9 bays, with metal-framed casements. Ground floor shop fronts are divided by plain pilasters. Above is regular fenestration with pedimented central windows to each front. End bays have pilasters, an angled corner bay, cornice and parapet.

ADJOINING BANK

The bank to the north-east (dated 1927) is in Baroque Revival style, ashlar with a moulded granite plinth, rusticated ground floor, dentillated main cornice, and pierced balustrade. Three storeys plus attics; 5 by 9 bays, with glazing bar sashes to the upper floors and metal-framed casements below. The first floor has pediments and keystones. The rounded corner entrance bay has a Doric door case with cornice and crest with supporters; above is a single window on each floor. The attic has a cartouche date stone with supporters under a broken scrolled pediment. Return facades have round-arched ground floor openings with keystones, with the upper floors divided by Ionic half-columns. End bays project.

INTERIOR

The Council House has a main entrance hall with marble panelling and Doric columns, and a curving marble staircase with pierced balustrade. The first floor reception hall contains full-height Ionic columns and a coffered ceiling. The dining hall has wooden panelling and pilasters with a coved plaster ceiling. The Lord Mayor's parlour and waiting room, members' room and library are panelled. The Lord Mayor's private room contains 17th-century oak panelling from Ashton Hall, Birmingham; the Lady Mayoress's parlour has Adam-style decoration. The Council chamber has pilaster panelling and a coffered ceiling, retaining original seating and galleries.

The bank interior has pilastered walls and two Ionic columns carrying a cross beam ceiling with a central domed skylight on pendentives. Late 20th-century renewals were made to the bank fittings.

HISTORY

Nottingham's original Exchange Hall stood on this site, built between 1724-26. Consideration of a new town hall began from the 1850s onwards, but it was not until the early 1920s that the council acquired all the other properties in the Exchange block, enabling the complete site to be redeveloped. The complex was built between 1926 and 1929, with official opening on 22 May 1929. Howitt's initial scheme of 1923-24 anticipated recovery of the council's buildings for University College, proposing the Exchange be rebuilt as a superior shopping arcade modelled on Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, with top-lit arcades. In an appreciation published in The Times shortly after Howitt's death in 1968, the Council House was described as "probably still the finest municipal building outside of London".