Town Hall - history

Service Outline

The building of Manchester Town Hall (1868 - 77) was undertaken because the neo-classical Town Hall in King Street had become too small to house the expanding business of the Corporation.

A competition was held, and won by Alfred Waterhouse (1830 - 1905), mainly for his ingenious planning. The site was an irregular triangle on which had to be fitted a large hall, a suite of reception rooms and living quarters for the Lord Mayor, as well as offices for all the Corporation departments and a chamber for Council meetings.

Waterhouse successfully combined the ceremonial and workaday requirements. The Town Hall was designed in the thirteenth century Gothic style but it was, in Waterhouse's words, a building "essentially of the nineteenth century." It incorporated such innovations as a warm air heating system. The structure comprises fourteen million bricks encased in spinkwell stone.