Next Tour: No dates yet, but the Glories of Manchester Architecture is on Friday the 19th of May 2023 at noon from outside the Midland Hotel.
Booking: With eventbrite.
Waterhouse, Worthington. Walters, Wood, Wilson, Womersley…and those are just the Ws.
We will walk around the city, admiring the key buildings, citing the great and not-so-great architects.
Waterhouse is of course Alfred, designer of the Town Hall and a surprising building in what is now Chinatown.
Worthington is Thomas who did the Albert Memorial and the Jubilee Fountain in Albert Square.
Walters? That’s Edward Walters of the Free Trade Hall plus those glorious cotton showrooms on Charlotte Street.
Wood. Aah, the greatest of them all: Edgar Wood. Forget Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Edgar Wood was the modernist master who was so feared by the staid Manchester establishment they relegated him to the suburbs. Just a chair to show for all his genius in the city centre.
As for Hugh Wilson and Lewis Womersley, the least said about the creators of the Arndale Centre the better, although we will talk about them pour l’encourager les autres.