Before and after

Eric Musgrave, Leeds Then and Now
Published by Pavilion Books

Leeds Then and Now is one of a stable of books featuring paired photographs of buildings and streets from great cities, each pair accompanied by succinct and informative text. They’re not the first books to take this approach, but they are certainly among the best. The quality comes through most immediately in terms of the visuals, well chosen historical images from a range of dates, some as old as the 1860s, some as recent as the 1970s, twinned with excellent photographs of the same scenes today taken by David Major. The text for each pair of images is succinct and informative. Both author and photographer have local roots and their knowledge of and pride in Leeds shines through.

The range of subjects extends from the city’s major buildings – such as the Corn Exchange, Town Hall, and City Market – to lesser structures that form part of the complex mix that makes up most of the central streets of Leeds. Impressed on a recent visit how well the greatest of the buildings are standing up to the trials of modern life, I turned to the pages on the Town Hall. Here, a photograph of 1905 shows Cuthbert Brodrick’s monumental urban temple substantially the same, less hemmed by signs and bollards than it is today, but without the trees that now soften its corners. The Corn Exchange is likewise slightly encumbered with signs compared to earlier, but the great sweep of street that runs up to it is still largely clear, and similar to how it was apart from one modern interloper. Another big building, the mock-Egyptian Temple Works, was looking dark and soot-blackened in 1935, but at least you could see it – when the ‘now’ photograph was taken the main block was hidden behind scaffolding and protective plastic; the frontage has also acquired railings that weren’t there in the 1930s. One hopes that the works will be restored and thrive, as have most of the city’s fine arcades like the Grand, Cross, and County, the latter a masterpiece of the great architect Frank Matcham, normally at work designing theatres. An image of 1949, however, shows the striking Victoria Arcade, one that has been lost.

I can get annoyed with a plethora of intrusive modern signs, but a look at the some the street views shows how much interesting signage we have lost. The losses range from Victorian and Edwardian monsters to more elegant bits of Art Nouveau, not to mention some jazzy signs from the 1930s onwards. A stretch of Briggate, for example, displayed enormous signs, with letters almost six feet high, across the upper floors of the Cash Boot Company in 1944. These signs are long gone, and the part of the front that remains has been cleaned so that its bricks and stone gleam; also gleaming is a facade of 2010 fronting one shop, a completely glass-clad front butting comfortably up against brick, stone and terracotta.

So Leeds Then and Now shows us some of what has been lost – stretches of Gothic or Renaissance shops demolished in the 20th century, 16th or 17th century merchants’ premises knocked down by the Victorians, Dickensian enclaves such as Rotation Office Yard, a striking Victorian market hall, the dazzling timber-framed premises of the Universal Furnishing Company, and so on and on. But it also makes us look more closely at what is still there, from details of 19th century shops to the City Markets (still fulfilling their function) to the Third White Cloth Hall, which is now a Pizza Express. Meanwhile we can weigh up for ourselves whether we’re grateful for some of the new building or in mourning for demolished architectural glories; sad about the vanished Victorian shop signs or pleased that the buildings beneath them can be more clearly seen. Either way, the book is a feast, and will encourage readers not only to study its engaging images further, but also to look carefully at what’s left – in my case by making further visits to Leeds.

Leeds

Gigantic Leeds (2)

My second gigantic and over-the-top building in Leeds is the Corn Exchange, another enormous structure by Cuthbert Brodrick and, like the Town Hall, a design that won a competition. Brodrick based it in the Halle au Blé in Paris, a domed circular building that had already inspired a major structure in London, the Coal Exchange by John Bunning, a masterpiece that John Betjeman tried unsuccessfully to save from demolition in the 20th century. Brodrick’s Leeds building, though, is elliptical with three semicircular protrusions that mark the entrances. While the Halle au Blé had a classical design with quite plain detailing, the Corn Exchange in Leeds is probably closer to baroque, with its gigantic size, its varying curves, and the monumental treatment of its masonry.

The exterior is of sandstone ashlar and the masonry is imposing, if not almost overwhelming in its finish. Most of the blocks are rusticated and carved to form diamonds pointing outwards; decoration includes swags and paterae; the clock is surrounded by garlands. The identifying inscription, by contrast, is in a dead plain sans serif letterform that seems to mean business.

And this was also, when it was originally completed in the 1863, a highly practical, businesslike building, housing a ring of offices for the corn factors around the perimeter and a large open market space accommodating stands for the factors in the centre. A balcony running around the walls half way up gives access to a further collection of offices, and above that is the vast dome, its structure largely visible from within and its great sweep dominated by two openings – a huge oval window that forms part of Brodrick’s design and an additional window like a vast curving slit, that is a later modification and adds another touch of eccentricity to this highly original building.

Since the Corn Exchange ceased to be used for trading in grain in the 1980s, it has undergone two restorations to attempt to adapt it for retail use. On the face of it, the result seems successful. The rings of offices convert easily to small shops without destroying the integrity of the building, and the open areas lend themselves well to café or restaurant use. However, the trading areas seemed very quiet when I visited and I do hope they weather the current difficult time for retailing in Britain. Brodrick’s building deserves to survive and deserves to be used.

Leeds

Gigantic Leeds (1)

Visiting Leeds recently, I found the experience fascinating, and in a way overwhelming. Some of the civic buildings are so large, they’re almost impossible to take in, and are difficult even to cram into the confines of a camera viewfinder. This phenomenon is not unusual in the large cities of northern England, the ones that saw their greatest expansion in the 19th century, but Leeds seems to take the effect to extremes. It’s a place I’ll have to return to, but for now, I’d like to record my impressions of a couple of the city’s most vast and remarkable structures – yes, for once on the English Buildings blog, after the telephone boxes and public lavatories, some truly grand and commanding architecture, structures obvious to the eye and compelling to the attention.

In 1852, a competition was announced for a new town hall building for the centre of Leeds. The demands were extraordinary: a public hall with standing room for 8,000 people, function rooms, reception rooms, a large suite of municipal offices. The whole caboodle was supposed to cost a mere £35,000, and just £200 was offered as the prize for the winning design. So much for so little: the job looked like a poisoned chalice and not many bothered to enter the competition. Charles Barry, who was hired to pick a winner chose the entry from Cuthbert Brodrick, a young unknown architect from Hull.

Brodrick didn’t have much experience, but the burghers of Leeds were impressed by his proposal – a vast complex surrounded by giant classical columns and set on a high plinth. In planning such an important building, the authorities might have insisted that Brodrick work with a more experienced architect, but they accepted him alone and merely asked for some modifications to the design, including the addition of a landmark tower, for which they undertook to provide a few more thousand pounds.

As the new building began to rise, it became clear that Leeds had chosen well. Photographs (imagine me, dear reader, jammed into a doorway opposite in an attempt to stand far enough away to get the whole thing in the frame, and straining to hold the camera high in order to avoid distorting all the columns out of the vertical) do not do it justice and cannot prepare one for the reality. It is enormous. The giant order – perhaps inspired by examples in France, perhaps by Vanbrugh’s giant columns in his country houses – dwarf passers-by, street furniture, double-decker buses. Even visitors from Bradford, which had recently acquired its own large Town Hall, or Liverpool, where St George’s Hall was monumental but smaller, might be impressed. The tower is more or less in proportion with the whole, unified with it by its own order of columns, and topped (after various suggestions by Brodrick) with a baroque eight-sided dome. The whole thing made contemporaries’ jaws drop, and has a similar effect today.

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On the story of this building and its architect, see Derek Linstrum, Towers and Colonnades: The Architecture of Cuthbert Brodrick (Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 1999)