Central Library

The Central Library is a public library built between 1900 and 1902, designed by H.T. Hare in a Free Renaissance style. The building is constructed primarily of brick with yellow terracotta dressings, and features a tile roof.

The facade to Garrick Street is seven bays, while a canted corner presents a four-bay facade to St. George’s Parade. The building features a terracotta plinth, a top frieze, and a coped parapet. The first bay projects forward with a parapeted return, and the second bay has a coped gable with a panel to its apex. The ground floor contains segmental-headed windows with moulded arches, fixed glazing featuring central arched lights and leaded glazing, flanked by flat banded buttresses. The first floor has double-chamfered-mullioned windows, with friezes bearing the names of eminent poets and broken pediments enclosing panels. Round attic windows are detailed with keystones and strips. A tall window of two narrow lights sits above a panel and a semi-circular open pediment in the first bay. The main entrance features an architrave, flanking banding, and a triple keystone within the tympanum, and a half-glazed door which retains a letterbox. The pavilion roof has a fleche and a stack. A 20th-century extension to the left originally returned to Old Hall Street.

The corner to the right of the building displays a three-bay centre that projects forward under a coped gable, incorporating a niche at the top. The banded ground floor has two cross-mullioned windows, while the first floor showcases three-by-three-by-three light windows with Ionic colonnettes, a transom, a central pediment, and apron panels bearing the Royal arms and flanking town arms. Small paired lights with pediments and top lunettes frame the attic, which rises to battered octagonal cupolas, topped with a louvre and fleche. An arcade with giant triple keystones leads to recessed entrances flanking the windows. The St. George’s Parade facade mirrors the Garrick Street facade, but the first floor features a central bowed oriel of four lights and two transoms, a flanking lights, a segmental gable, and two cross-mullioned windows with name friezes and segmental pediments.

The interior features a staircase with balustrade and lantern, rooms supported by Ionic columns, a barrel-vaulted room with aisles and balustraded balconies, and a room with a glazed dome on Ionic columns. The library is considered a particularly fine example of the Free Renaissance style.