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| Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping |
It stands on Quay Street just down from Deansgate and a little before you get to the Opera House.
It was at the time according to the Manchester Guardian, “the tallest and largest building in Manchester, [standing] on a site of 3,000 square yards and rises 200 feet from the red rock foundations to its roof ridge.
People who pass it are amazed at its massiveness. It is a landmark which can be seen on a clear day from the Belmont Hills beyond Bolton, twenty miles distant.”
Now I rather think I will go looking for what people thought about the building in 1931, and particularly on its impact as a landmark, if only to reflect on the response to that other tall building, which is the Beetham Tower.
The Beetham Tower is the tallest building in the Manchester dominating the sky line and can be seen from miles outside the city.
I do have mixed feelings about this modern giant alternating between that easy and lazy response that it is a blot on the landscape to marvelling at its sheer size and elegance. But that I guess is how all new buildings are viewed.
Like Sunlight House the Tower sits on a comparatively small plot on Deansgate and is named after its developers.
But this is not about the Beetham Tower so I shall return to that article from the Guardian which writes
“It is shaped almost like a cube and is so proportioned as to be classic in form. Modern conceptions of architecture are expressed in the sleekness and in the vertical lines.
There are sixteen storeys in the building and about a thousand rooms. The basement, lofty and with large top-lighted dome is to be used as a restaurant and the ground floor for shops or showrooms and restaurant-café.
The occupants of the top floors will be able to enjoy fresh breezes in a healthy environment, unfamiliar in narrow streets and dark offices.
Every modern aid to cleanliness and efficiency is embodied. The floors are of polished oak throughout the building.
An electric vacuum cleaning apparatus draws the dust down to a receptacle in the basement.
Express lifts are installed to travel at 450 feet per minute. In every room there is an electric synchronised clock.
The architect has taken particular care to arrange for the most adequate lighting and ventilation.
By widening the adjoining street to twice its previous breadth he improved the lighting at the same time as he enhanced the building perspective.
The result is that people in the offices in Sunlight House will work under hygienic conditions. The heating system of radiators is, further, conducive to cleanliness in the atmosphere.”
An observation which is confirmed by the claim that
“Before this new pile was erected the site contained some of Manchester’s worst slums, and it is satisfactory to note, in view of the difficulties which Manchester and other places are having in the matter of removing slum populations and providing them with alternative accommodation that private enterprise has helped to transfer successfully the tenants of a congested area and put up a building with a rateable value of “30,000 a year.”
Which is where I shall leave Sunlight House for today, but there is more and I shall return tomorrow with just a little bit more on the building, its architect and his frustrated plans.
*Sunlight House, the Manchester Guardian, May 12, 1931
Photograph; properties on Quay Street, 1910, m68184,courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
Painting; Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
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I worked there in the early 70's for TG & P, up on the top floor.
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