Gem Buildings

BIRMINGHAM

997/0/10309 HOCKLEY HILL 29-APR-04 20-21 Gem Buildings

II Manufactory, now shops and clothing factory. 1913, with late C20 alterations. By Wood and Kendrick, architects of Birmingham, for Ginder and Ginder, diamond cutters and polishers . Painted brick and rendered exterior with concrete structural elements and detailing and with pitched roofs concealed by parapets. Functionalist pier and panel exterior enlivened by minimalist Edwardian Baroque detailing. PLAN: Irregular H-plan, the complex linking Hockley Hill and Key Hill, and with display elevations to both frontages. EXTERIOR: Hockley Street frontage of 4 storeys above a basement. Asymmetrical elevation, the windows occupying almost the entire frontage. The bays are arranged 1:2:1 with outer bays flanked by full height pilaster-like piers, the left-hand bay with an entrance to a stair well, the 2 centre bays with an off-centre doorway and a wide display window to the left, and a smaller window to the right. The right-hand bay has a wide ground floor window. Main doorway giving access to ground floor shops, formerly offices, with double 2 panel doors, ovolo-moulded surround, shallow- arched transom and multi-pane overlight. Doorway to left with shouldered segmental hood on brackets. Above doorways and altered window openings, wide display fascia below moulded cornice. Windows to upper floors have multi-pane metal frames, the heads and cills aligned in the 2 centre and right-hand bays. Left-hand bay with low, shallow- arched window above cornice, and windows above placed to light stair well levels. Piers flanking outer bays have dentilled caps , resembling the bases of open-bed pediments, behind which are parapet panels each bearing the inscription 'A.D.1913' Key Hill elevation asymmetrical and more plainly detailed, with wide 4-light windows to bays 1 and 3 which retain presumed original transomed wooden frames with multi-pane transom lights. Doorway between the windows, this pattern determining the window pattern above, with wide and narrow multi-pane metal frames. Wide display fascia above doorway with sign which reads ' GEM BUILDINGS'. Right-hand bay with 3-light transomed window to ground floor, and 3 narrow lights to each upper floor. HISTORY: The building plans show a sub-divided and 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 to the 2 upper floors. The pitched roof is shown supported by a tensioned metal truss system.

A specialist manufactory of 1913, little-altered externally, and one of the earliest buildings in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter to display the influence of Functionalism in factory design.