Liverpool’s history began in 1207, when England’s king chartered a town there. None of these five structures are quite that historic, but all of them capture a vivid sense of the times in which they were built.
Earlier versions of the descriptions of these buildings first appeared in 1001 Buildings You Must See Before You Die, edited by Mark Irving (2016). Writers’ names appear in parentheses.
Albert Dock
Albert Dock is the finest of the 19th-century dock buildings in Britain. It comprises a single dock basin surrounded by a massive granite wall for security along with five linked stacks of five-story warehouses around the quays, all of fireproof construction. Along the waterfront, massive iron columns support the wall on a combination of straight lintels and elliptical arches. These arches, which allowed valuable bonded cargo to be swung from ship to shore, add a graceful note to the austere brick elevations. Inside, the structure is carried by cast iron with vaulted brick ceilings, which undulate to give greater strength. The roof design was original, being made of wrought-iron plates riveted together as a form of skin, stressed by iron trusses. Jesse Hartley, dock engineer to the Port of Liverpool, brought practical bridge-building experience with an eye for architectural effect.
Albert Dock, which was completed in 1846, survived decades of redundancy and threats of demolition, partly because it was such a tough building from the start and partly because it provided such a compelling image of Classicism blended with utility. One can read the rationale of every stone and brick, granite replacing sandstone where friction was expected, and corners curved to prevent ships’ rigging from snagging in narrow places. Although the docks were built well into the Victorian period, they retain the attractive simplicity of 50 years before. (Alan Powers)
St. George’s Hall
One of Europe’s finest Neoclassical buildings, St. George’s Hall is a monument to the wealth and civic aspirations of a great commercial city in the 19th century. Liverpool continued to thrive and expand in this period, despite its trade in enslaved people having been ended in 1807, yet its citizens were increasingly aware that it was lagging behind in cultural matters. A competition was held in 1839 for a public hall for meetings, concerts, and dinners, and it was won by 25-year-old Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, who shortly afterward won a separate competition for the new courts of law. He subsequently revised his designs to produce a multifunctional building, and work began in 1841. Ill health forced Elmes to withdraw before work had begun on the interior, and he died in Jamaica. Charles Robert Cockerell took over the supervision and was largely responsible for designing the interiors of St. George’s Hall, which was completed in 1856.
Although Elmes’s competition designs were in the Greek Revival idiom, Roman elements—notably the giant Corinthian order that marches around and unifies the exterior—were introduced as he revised them, and the result is a highly original and complex synthesis of the two styles. The scale is vast, and deliberately so, since the citizens of Liverpool wanted to trump rivals such as the recently completed Birmingham Town Hall. Elmes’s relatively chaste shell contains Cockerell’s sumptuous sequence of halls and courtrooms, including a circular and lavishly decorated Small Concert Hall. The central space is the enormous Main Concert Hall, reminiscent of a Roman basilica, with an elaborate tiled floor, fabulous bronze doors and gasoliers, and a crowning barrel vault. St. George’s Hall shows Elmes to have been an exceptional architect, despite his tragically short career, and he was fortunate to have had such a brilliant, sympathetic successor. (Roger White)
Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool
High on St. James’s Mount, the Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool dominates the city and the Mersey estuary. Construction began in 1903 when Liverpool was at the peak of its prosperity as Britain’s principal transatlantic port. Despite two world wars, the end of the British Empire, and the city’s economic decline, work continued—using stone quarried at Woolton—until it was formally completed in 1924.
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was 22 years old when he won the 1903 architectural competition for the cathedral. At first he worked with George Frederick Bodley, architect of the cathedral’s Lady Chapel. After Bodley’s death in 1907, Scott was sole architect.
When completed, the building became the largest Anglican cathedral in the world. The 331-foot-high (101 m) tower impresses by its height and subtle bulk. The lower part is square, punctuated by the maw of the Rankin Porch. The tower tapers to an eight-sided upper stage, topped with a crown of lanterns. The interior spaces awe and impress: the immensely high central tower space; the 457-foot-long (139 m) nave; and the round-arched bridge at the eastern end. Reflecting the wealth of local merchants, the interior is richly furnished with monuments, glass, and furniture.
The painstaking masonry work supported a team of craftspeople for many years. They were involved in training stonemasons working on New York’s Gothic cathedral St. John the Divine, symbolizing the links between the two transatlantic port cities and the international Anglican community. (Aidan Turner-Bishop)
Tate & Lyle Sugar Silo
At times the most interesting buildings that surround us are not necessarily the most beautiful. A good case in point is Liverpool’s former Tate & Lyle sugar silo, completed in 1955.
Liverpool was once an internationally important port, thanks partly to the lucrative sugar trade. Henry Tate of the firm Tate & Lyle began his business in Liverpool, and the immense wealth he accrued from sugar later funded the various Tate art galleries. Traders in granular products such as sugar had long found storage problematic because when poured in quantity they form a natural mound. At the turn of the 20th century, reinforced concrete became available, and North America—the source of many granular crops such as wheat and sugar—was soon dotted with enormous silos. These stark, utilitarian structures were to inspire many Modernist architects.
The Tate & Lyle Sugar Silo is a 528-foot-long (161 m), 90-foot-high (26 m) unobstructed space with a rough, ribbed exterior that contrasts with the smooth, unadorned interior. To stand in it while empty is to stand in a space unlike any other. The scale and simplicity of the building is ample compensation for its lack of traditional beauty, and it is a superb example of the Modernist credo of form following function. (Eddy Rhead)
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral
Until the erection of today’s popular 1960s building, Roman Catholics in Liverpool had no true cathedral in which to worship. Edward Welby Pugin, son of the more famous Augustus, was commissioned to design a cathedral in 1853 but only part of it was built, which served as a parish church until it was demolished in the 1980s. After the Anglican cathedral began to rise at one end of Hope Street in 1904, Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned to outdo Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s design at a new site at the other end of the same street. Lutyens conceived a monumental building, featuring a great dome, 168 feet (51 m) in diameter; the height was to be 520 feet (158 m), dwarfing the 330-foot (101 m) tower of its Anglican rival. The crypt was completed after World War II, but funds were unavailable to complete the immense superstructure.
When Cardinal John Heenan arrived in Liverpool, he opened a competition to design a new building that would relate to the existing crypt, be completed within five years, and cost no more than one million pounds for its shell. Chosen from 300 entries, the design of Sir Frederick Gibberd consists of a circular nave, around which are 16 satellite chapels and anterooms. The building is flooded by natural light from a central lantern and floor-to-roof stained-glass panels. In keeping with the new spirit of the liturgy, the altar is set low in the center to facilitate greater participation of the congregation. (Frank Ritter)