Central Library And Attached Walls And Railings

The Central Library, built in 1906, is by Charles Holden and stands with attached walls and railings. It is constructed from limestone ashlar with Pennant ashlar panels, featuring lateral stacks and a green slate cross-gabled roof. The architectural style is a Free Early Tudor design incorporating influences of the Modern Movement.

The building is two storeys with an attic and two basements, presented as a symmetrical 14-window range. The front has shallow projecting wings with paired buttresses on the lower half, a parapet, and gables set back with clasping buttresses, all linked by a parapet in front of the recessed attic storey. The left-hand wing features a semicircular-arched doorway with splayed sides and a moulded arch, leading to a flat-headed doorway with double half-glazed doors and a segmental-arched plate-glass overlight. Above this is a tall mullion and transom oriel with carved detailing and a parapet; the right-hand wing has a similar mullion and transom window. Ground-floor windows in the wings are set in semicircular recesses, and all have two lights with moulded surrounds. The central section contains three full-height segmental-arched recesses, with paired ground-floor windows and first-floor canted oriels featuring chequerboard panels and a coved cornice. Carved figures of Bede, Alfred the Great, and Chaucer are displayed within the tympanum above. The second floor has shallow buttresses flanking the windows, and the gables feature round mullion and transom windows, a gabled moulded cornice with Tudor roses and a shield. The left return and rear elevations are a complex arrangement of recessed planes and blind arches, incorporating a two-storey bowed stair block with buttresses rising between mullion windows.

The interior includes a vaulted entrance hall with marble-clad piers to mosaic vaults and a large ashlar-clad winder stair. The upper hall is arranged in a 1:3:1 bay pattern with a semicircular-arched vault, Ionic pilasters to an entablature and dentil cornice, Tuscan columns to a balcony, and columns along the central bay to the entablature. Doorways to the winder balcony stairs feature segmental pediments and first-floor oculi with festoon decoration. A finely carved overmantel, attributed to Grinling Gibbons, was relocated from the former King Street Library.

The attached front area walls, railings, and lamps are considered subsidiary features. The library is described as one of the great masterpieces of the early Modern Movement, with the north front referencing the Great Gatehouse and the rear elevations drawing comparisons to contemporary work in Glasgow by Mackintosh. It represents a supreme example of Edwardian Free Style with a bold, rationalist design that influenced the work of other architects.