Just a few images - quite disparate - from our recent trip to Birmingham. Our first port-of-call was the Bennets Hill area - Regency and lavish Victorian banks. The area was laid out in the 1827 on the site, I believe, of a mansion and large garden. Of the banks, the best are the National Provincial Bank, 1869, by John Gibson - it's the one with the ingenious entrance in the curved corner - and, opposite, the Midland Bank, 1830, by Rickman & Hutchinson. Both are now pubs.
After a quick return to the hotel with our shopping haul we headed off to St Martin-in-the-Bullring before meeting family, before the concert, in Waterstone's cafe, in a building designed, I think, by J J Burnet and partners. We then walked up to the Museum and Art Gallery along New St. As Pevnser and Wedgewood remarked in the Warwickshire edition of The Buildings of England, 'this street has lost its best buildings.' Indeed it has. Gone are King Edward's School by Barry, 1838; Royal Birmingham Society of Arts of 1829, Rickman & Hutchinson; The Exchange by Edward Holmes, 1863-5. The 'greasy till' has triumphed. It is, however, not as downright ugly and dirty as Corporation St.
Our visit timed with the partial re-opening of the City Museum and Art Gallery. It was good to be back, BUT I think we all felt that it had been ideologically captured and that we preferred it as it had been. Afterwards we popped into the Art College and the Midland Institute: the former band box smart, the letter somewhat tired.
Our visit timed with the partial re-opening of the City Museum and Art Gallery. It was good to be back, BUT I think we all felt that it had been ideologically captured and that we preferred it as it had been. Afterwards we popped into the Art College and the Midland Institute: the former band box smart, the letter somewhat tired.
On our second and final morning in the city we walked the short distance up to the n end of Corporation St, that rather cack-handed attempt at a Parisian boulevard. It was where, in 2023, we caught the bus to Lichfield. Though work has been completed on the Victoria Law Courts things have not improved; they may in fact have worsened. A glance at the images below will show shrubbery sprouting from gables of the court building, and the buildings on either side of the street to the n are in a very bad way. On the w side 187 - 203* seemed to have been completely abandoned; on the e the former Methodist Central Hall awaits conversion to a hotel. Like the Victoria Law Courts opposite, it is faced with red terracotta in a style, here, somewhere between English Perpendicular Gothic and Art Nouveau. It too is in a sorry state. Vandalism and neglect are exacting a heave price with windows smashed, graffiti, etc. There are Art Nouveau shop fronts all along the Corporation St facade. All are at risk. Sometimes it strikes me that Birmingham City Council are at war not only with the city's past but with very people they represent.
I wanted a second look at that fascinating building, the Victoria Law Courts (Aston Webb & Ingress Bell, 1887-91) - particularly the side and rear facades. Considerable more utilitarian than the main facade they are handled with consummate skill; the rear facade is an object lesson how to design a building on a hillside. I think the Newton St facade is by another, later architect - severe when compared to the other parts of the building, but done in a good, sturdy yeoman Arts and Crafts manner with good detailing; the roof is marvelous with dormer windows and graded slates. In all a building I rather like, but in a sense it is a failure in the same way that G E Street's Royal Courts of Justice are; neither of them have quiet enough heft. One feels that a 19th century French architect trained in the Beaux Arts tradition (for all its faults) would instinctively know how to handle the situation. The courts just seem more suited to a County town than a great city like Birmingham.
I wanted a second look at that fascinating building, the Victoria Law Courts (Aston Webb & Ingress Bell, 1887-91) - particularly the side and rear facades. Considerable more utilitarian than the main facade they are handled with consummate skill; the rear facade is an object lesson how to design a building on a hillside. I think the Newton St facade is by another, later architect - severe when compared to the other parts of the building, but done in a good, sturdy yeoman Arts and Crafts manner with good detailing; the roof is marvelous with dormer windows and graded slates. In all a building I rather like, but in a sense it is a failure in the same way that G E Street's Royal Courts of Justice are; neither of them have quiet enough heft. One feels that a 19th century French architect trained in the Beaux Arts tradition (for all its faults) would instinctively know how to handle the situation. The courts just seem more suited to a County town than a great city like Birmingham.
We wandered towards the RC cathedral through what was once the Gun Quarter but all is now Ichabod.
* Coleridge Chambers, 1898, by John W Allen and Ruskin Buildings, 1900, by Ewen & J Alfred Harper.
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