66 And 68, Vittoria Street

BIRMINGHAM

997/0/10350 VITTORIA STREET 29-APR-04 66 AND 68

II Manufactory. Late C19 with minor late C20 alterations. Red brick with painted stone dressings and moulded brick decoration, brick ridge and gable stacks and a slate roof covering. PLAN: T-shaped plan, the rectangular street frontage range with covered goods bay to right and central rear range. EXTERIOR: 3 storey, 3 bay range with main entrance to left-hand bay and vehicle entrance and secondary pedestrian entrance to right-hand bay. Main doorway and flanking lancet windows with semi-circular arched heads, the arch with painted springers and keyblocks, and triple- arch hood mould. Panelled door with semi-circular overlight and sash frames to flanking windows. Centre bay with paired sash windows beneath segmental arched and banded heads. Right-hand bay with vehicle and pedestrian entrances grouped beneath wide segmental brick arch, the two openings each with an inner arched head, and separated by a narrow brick pier. Diagonally-boarded double doors to vehicle entrance, panelled door with overlight to pedestrian doorway. First floor with 3 triple-light, asymmetrically-divided sashes with shallow arched heads set within semi-circular arched heads, the centre arch of each with an expressed keystone. The sashes are separated by painted shafts, and rise from a sill band. Linked hood moulds extend from painted imposts. Upper floor clerestorey of 13 shallow arch-headed lights with sash frames, the brick piers separating the lights with painted plaques on moulded brick corbels forming an interrupted eaves cornice. INTERIOR: Main entrance hall with imposing curved turned baluster staircase rising from a geometrically-patterned encaustic tile floor. Moulded stair handrails with scrolled terminals. Forms a group with No. 64 Vittoria Street (q.v.) . A carefully- detailed and little- altered late C19 manufactory displaying the distinctive architectural and plan form characteristics of works premises in an industrial quarter of Birmingham now recognised as being of international significance.