Manchester Central Library and Victorian Streetscape, St Peter's Square

8 October 2019 · Manchester

Manchester Central Library's curved Portland stone colonnade fills the right frame, its Corinthian columns standing clean against a pale blue summer sky. Opposite, the Victorian red-brick building on the left holds its own — ornate, darker, blunter in its grammar. The street lamp between them draws a vertical line that the two centuries of architecture argue across. St Peter's Square in one frame: civic ambition on both sides of the street, separated by about a hundred years and a very different idea of what a city should look like.