BUILDING THE MODERN CITY.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10066, 6 February 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

BUILDING THE MODERN CITY.

(By P. G. Konoclv, in the London Daily Mail.)

Liverpool can boast of a noble architectural tradition. Cockerel, the great investigator of the principles that constituted tlie- supreme beauty of classic Greek architecture—the perfect blonding of strength with refinement—has left upon that city the stamp of his genius. His Bank of England and Liverpool, London, and Globe Insurance bnildings are architectural masterpieces of the rarest perfection; and St. George's Hall, begun by Elmes and finished by Cockerell, is, perhaps, the most dignified, well-proportioned, and effective building in the United Kingdom. Then' came the late Mr Watcrhotisr. the designer of the Natural History Museum in London, who, in one of his worst fits of Gothic revivalism, designed the new Liverpool University, and with it set l& evil an example for Liverpool and Manchester as Sir Aston Wi.bb's Law Courts had been done for Birmingham. With one blow he. killed a zreat tradition, and replaced order by chaos. Thus, by a strange irony of fate, the germ of evil was implanted in what should have been the centre of culture, tluj fostering school of taste, assthetic judgment, and logical thought.

A vast area is cov.-ivd !>y the disconnected parte of this pile of brown terracotta and machine-made brick, which ?n their general effect \ire- so like some ugly hospital building that one's eye? involuntarily search for the customary iron bridges that connect the main block of a hospital with the subsidiary buildings. There is no lack of towers and »ables and sugar-loaf turrets and cast terracotta ornamentation, but all this detail is ineffective, except in so far as it results in an almost irrotesquelv broken skvinc. The old Gothic builders who discarded rigid symmetry, knew, perhaps instinctively, how to retain the harmonious balance of masses: but here balance and symmetry are treated with the same <lisres]>ert. And when you enter the lftrge hall you halt in wonderment. Is this" really a university, or is it a vast underground railway station, or an up-to-date bathing establishment? All the walls are clad with bright. shiny, glazed bricks—monstrous combinations of crude colors—square tiles, brown and blue and yellow and green, sometimes plain, sometimes east in nasty patterns. Yon 6ich for the simplicity- of the ''Bakerloo'' passages, which assume the dignity of a noble style by sheeT force of contrast. When, some years ago, the new landing stage was erected in Liverpool for the Transatlantic liners, the space formerly occupied by the George's Docks became available for building nurposes, thns offering an absolutely unique opportunity for the planning of a grand architectural scheme within the very entrance-gate of the Old World. Let "us see how this opportunity was bungled away. The most important, and therefore central, feature should have been the new Dock Board Offices. Now. instead of beinr* in the centre, this building, which is of the late "Renaissance type, is planted on one of the corners of the site, where it will eventually be completely dwarfed and almost annihilated by the skyscrapers now in course of erection. Nor is this the only objection. The Dock Offioes are as badly proportioned and out of scale as could be. One has only to compare the building with the nsw Dublin Town Hall to realise the poverty of the design. In their main features" the two elevations ar« almost identical, but all that is elegant and pleasing at Belfast is turned into ehunsiness at Liverpool. In many ways the most satisfactory and certainly the most stately of the new monumental buildings is the new Cotton Exchange, with its" well-articulated Renaissance facade enlivened: by an elegant portico that extends along the whole front, and flanked by two little towers of somewhat trifling "character. The annexe behind this stone building, which serves for offices and needs the maximum of light for examining the color and quality of cotton, is constructed entirely of cast-iron and glass in a style which is admirably appropriate for such material and does not attempt to disguise the utilitarian purpose. The new Wesleyan Central Hall —again a terra-«otta building—presents,- at least

from the entrance, a well-balanced and well-supported Byzantinesque mass, although on closer inspection the coarse art nouveau details destroy its homogeneous appearance. Of infinitely better style and proportions are the White Star Offices, a pleasingly decorated, cabled brick house that appropriately suggests one of the old Bansn Union "warehouses : Parr's Bank, a modern classic building, with a granite ground 11 ■ and marble veneer on the upper storvs : and the Royal Insurance Offices, which are cleverly planned to fill a very 1,,,,,.- -,nA iwi-rnv'sit*.

Ion"- and narrow site. The list of architectural disfigurements would not be complete without the Victoria Memorial on the site of the Old Castle, the architectural portion of which has no relation to the sculpture and terminates in a cupola tip-toting, as it were, on the extreme inner edges of four heavy hunches of columns : and the laying out of the -romantic " trarden. with its new art balustrades and pedestals for statues in front of the severelv classic St. tleorge"* Hall. The case of Manchester is even worse. In that i-ifv of fog ami soot :< tew years suffice to t'inge the stone and brick alike with the dull Mack of old iron, cifaeint; all color and delicate detail work. The oiilv architectural prxssiliility lifts in the. siioim. clearly-marked form of the r:\aafir orders, such as will be found in Cockerell's vei- dhrnified liank r,f Kngland, or in the lonic old Town Hall mow the Free Keferenee Library), which is to be pulled -J.,„-,i f,i i-iiom for Kiime modern hnsi-

down to malie rciom lor some iihxiumi i»biJK'SS atrocity! Under fliesc circumstances it is truly' . pitiful to observe the extravagant expenditure lavished uiion the futile effort of decorating the new .Midland' Hotel with features that in another year or two will be invisible. The building, which is of a mongrel German Renaissance type, oc-' i copies an enormous irregular plot, the outline of which it follows apparently without orderly design, balance, or clear divisions, it has no end of balconies, dormer windows, projections, gables, German and Chinese. Renaissance ornaments, volutes, squat columns, piled up without system, and forming a bewildering surface and skyline. The main portion of the Gothic revival University is of stone, the subsidiary buildings of machine-made bricks put together in a manner far inferior to the adjoining plain brewery premises. But already, stone - ;uid brick have assumed the same dead leaden hue. The square Gothic tower recalls panful memories of the Natural History Museum. The shapelessness of the Eye Hospital defies description, and makes one the better appreciate in spite of its crude detail, the thoroughly well grouped and clearly articulated Roval Infirmary, a handsome building of brick with stone dressings, symmetrically panned and yet full of variety, with two remarkably graceful colonnaded bridges connecting the centre with the two wings. The general effect would, however. be~ infinitely'gayer if the bricks were joined with white sand instead of black cinder. The new Dental Hospital, with its course of wreathed round windows over a row of oblong windows, as at' Hampton Court, its lialf-domed entrance, and: general modernised Rococo gayness, is again a. ~ood design rather spoilt by vulgar decoration. One of the best' buildings in Manchester is th» Refuge Insurance Company, which has much of the refinement of the Early Renaissance style, and is one of. the few instances of the best use that can be made of terra-cotta for- small' details in the manner of the eariy Italians. By its side, what appears to "be an extension of this building is now in course of con- . struction, the two parts being joined by a gigantic and horribly disproportionate Georgian Rococo doorway. It seems impossible to arrive at anything more depraved in taste than the new Municipal School of Technology, a shapeless, ugly, over-decorated terra-cotta concoction, not unlike the very worst type of London residential flats—impossible, until your eyes alight upon the new-Fire Station close by, which is the last word in ugliness of form as well as of color. It is one mass of inconsistencies, has every possible architectural vice, and looks as if it had jnst been covered with a : brownish-yellow solution of shellac. • Manchester is the home of music, and architecture has been called frozen music. <

In her buildings Manchester certainly belies her fame. But still, there is at least one oasis of truly musical rhythm among all the atrocious discord; in the facade of' the General Post Office will be found originality, exqnisiteness of detail, and perfection of scale and • proportion. ■ *