Gem Buildings

Gem Buildings is a manufactory, now shops and a clothing factory, built in 1913 with later alterations in the late 20th century. It was designed by Wood and Kendrick, architects of Birmingham, for Ginder and Ginder, diamond cutters and polishers. The exterior is of painted brick and rendered materials with concrete structural elements and detailing, and has pitched roofs concealed by parapets. The building's design is a functionalist style enlivened by minimalist Edwardian Baroque detailing.

The building occupies an irregular H-plan, connecting Hockley Hill and Key Hill, with display elevations on both frontages. The Hockley Hill frontage is four storeys high, above a basement. The asymmetrical elevation features windows that occupy almost the entire frontage, arranged in a 1:2:1 bay pattern. The outer bays are flanked by full-height pilaster-like piers; the left-hand bay contains a stairwell entrance, the two centre bays have an off-centre doorway and a wide display window to the left, and a smaller window to the right, and the right-hand bay has a wide ground-floor window. The main doorway provides access to ground-floor shops, which were formerly offices, and features double panel doors with an ovolo-moulded surround, a shallow arched transom, and a multi-pane overlight. A shoulder-shaped segmental hood on brackets sits above the left-hand doorway. Above the doorways and altered window openings is a wide display fascia below a moulded cornice. Upper-floor windows have multi-pane metal frames, with heads and cills aligned in the two centre and right-hand bays. The left-hand bay has a low, shallow-arched window above the cornice, and windows above serve to light stairwell levels. The piers flanking the outer bays have dentilled caps, resembling the bases of open-bed pediments, behind which are parapet panels each bearing the inscription 'A.D.1913'.

The Key Hill elevation is asymmetrical, with more plainly detailed elements, including wide four-light windows in bays one and three, which retain presumed original transomed wooden frames with multi-pane transom lights. A doorway sits between the windows, dictating the window pattern above. Wide and narrow multi-pane metal frames are also present. A wide display fascia above the doorway displays the name ‘GEM BUILDINGS’. The right-hand bay has a three-light transomed window to the ground floor and three narrow lights to each upper floor.

Original building plans show a subdivided, heated basement floor with basement lights to the street elevations, a ground floor with front and rear entrances to multiple offices, and undivided workshop space on the two upper floors. A tensioned metal truss system originally supported the pitched roof.

Gem Buildings represents a specialist manufactory of 1913, with relatively few external alterations, and is considered one of the earliest examples in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter that exhibits the influence of Functionalism in factory design.