Council House, City Museum and Art Gallery and Council House extension

Council House, City Museum and Art Gallery and Council House extension

This is a major civic complex in Victoria Square, comprising three linked buildings built over five decades.

The original Council House was designed by H R Yeoville Thomason and completed between 1874 and 1879. It is constructed of stone with a tiled roof and rises to three storeys plus basement. The main façade is organised as a three-bay centrepiece flanked by eight-bay wings, whose outer bays project forward and are topped with segmental pediments. The centrepiece features a wide and deep porte-cochere supporting a balcony. Behind this sits a central arch with a mosaic tympanum by Salviati, flanked by Corinthian piers and columns that carry a pediment with carved relief. Above rises a dome set on a high drum. On either side of the porte-cochere are windows with shoulders, and the first and second floors are articulated by giant Corinthian pilasters.

Internally, a grand staircase beneath the dome ascends to a suite of three reception rooms on the first floor, decorated with Corinthian pilasters and coffered ceilings. The Council Room is a small semi-circular space. On the left-hand return is the entrance to the City Museum and Art Gallery.

The City Museum and Art Gallery, built between 1881 and 1885 and also designed by Yeoville Thomason, follows the general design and decorative approach of the Council House. Its entrance is reached by steps within a two-storey portico crowned by a sculptured pediment. To its left stands 'Big Brum', a tall clock tower with a tiled roof. At the head of the museum's main staircase hangs a fresco titled Corporation Street in March 1914, painted by Joseph Southall in 1915–16.

A later extension to the Council House was built between 1911 and 1919 by architects Ashley and Newman. Also constructed of stone, it rises to two storeys plus basement and attic. It adopts an Edwardian Renaissance style rather than Baroque, with banded rustication to the ground floor and giant order on the upper floors. This extension houses part of the Feeney Art Galleries of the City Museum and Art Gallery. It is connected to the main building by a bridge spanning a broad segmental arch over Chamberlain Square. The complex is bounded by Great Charles Street, Queensway, Congreve Passage, Chamberlain Square and Margaret Street.

In 1914, the Birmingham Art Gallery was the subject of suffragette action. On 9 June, Bertha Ryland, a 28-year-old member of the Women's Social and Political Union, used a butcher's cleaver hidden in her blouse to damage the painting 'Master Thornhill' by George Romney, causing £50 of damage. This attack was part of a broader campaign of vandalism at art galleries and museums across Britain between March and July 1914. Ryland was arrested at the scene and subsequently identified from a note she left giving her name and address, in which she protested against the differential treatment of suffragette prisoners and Irish militants.