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38 C O N T E X T 1 7 9 : M A R C H 2 0 2 4 replaced by Metrolink tramlines, a simplified grass open space and, as ever in Manchester, the opportunity to make money by slapping down an undistinguished office block. When I visited with a group of planning students a decade ago, the planning officers dismissed student suggestions for new, city- centre greenspace. This is an industrial city, they argued, about 100 years out of date. But Manchester has at last started to take greenspace seriously with two new spaces, which soften its harsh industrial heritage. The spectacular steel viaducts that once brought the railway into what was Central Station have had a National Trust makeover, financed partly by the Peoples’ Postcode Lottery. Manchester’s take on New York’s High Line, it is currently on a one- year lease from the Department for Transport. Several millions would be required to repair and repaint this rusting, listed structure. Meanwhile, behind the long-derelict Mayfield Station, a wholly new park has been created, focused on an exhumed watercourse. It is not the cleanest water in the world but nature is at last back in the city, the design is thoughtful and, as city centre temperatures rise the park, will doubtless prove wildly popular. Nairn reserved judgment on the once-daring plans for ‘Piccadilly Plaza’. The tall blocks, bizarre roofline structures and weird, 1960s spiral car park ramp are no longer a shocking intrusion, but like the ‘Lazy S’ building on the approach to Piccadilly Station, a quirky memory of optimism past. It was the older buildings that really grabbed Nairn’s attention. The Art Gallery on Moseley Street, designed by Sir Charles Barry when he was only 29, deftly manages the Greek vocabulary of porticoes, columns and low-relief plaques. In the 1960s, it was still shrouded in black. CF Cockerell’s Bank of England Building is one of his three masterpieces in pure Roman architecture. Also acknowledged is Lutyens’s masterly Midland Bank, with its split pediment and ‘fun and games’. Nairn was a fan of the cathedral, the medieval Chetham’s Hospital, the Central Library and the Waterhouse-designed Town Hall, the latter now in the midst of an expensive restoration. In so doing, he parted company with historian AJP Taylor, whose celebrated 1950s essay on Manchester took a caustically witty view. The Central Library, Taylor wrote, ‘is remarkable for presenting an exact model of an iced wed- ding cake on a gigantic scale. One half expects members of the library committee to emerge on high at any moment and cut it into slices. There is also the civic building which now fills the gap between the library and the town hall. This tones down their irreconcilable contrast by being itself in a style alleged to be the Dutch domestic of the late 17th century.’ 2 Less well received was the Rylands Library, tremendously clever, according to Nairn, but built in the wrong place. Despite its expensive restoration, you cannot help but agree. It is a ponderous and overdone structure which sits ill with itself and its surroundings, so unlike the delightful Victorian frontage on the Sawyers Arms, characteristically spotted by Nairn a few doors away. Nairn was way ahead of the curve on two big issues: traffic and city-centre living. He looked to a future when the ring road was finished and Mayfield Park at last provides new greenspace for the city centre. The Castlefield railway viaducts: spectacular industrial structures on a short-term lease to the National Trust 2 This penetrating essay can be found in AJP Taylor’s Essays in English History . Ian Nairn (Drawing by Rob Cowan)