38 CONTEXT 183 : MARCH 2025 remains compact and easy to walk around. Liverpool was (and still is) full of great and richly endowed buildings. They are rooted in the city’s wealthy past as England’s greatest imperial seaport, as much as its dark history as England’s biggest slave trading port – although it was not the centre for slave ownership, a dubious distinction that applies to London. The sandstone ridge is covered in landmarks, including the two cathedrals and the University of Liverpool. Rodney Street remains one of the finest Georgian streets in England. ‘It is the nearest thing to Dublin on this side of the Irish Sea,’ Nairn ventured. Then come the individual masterpieces: the Town Hall built by Wood of Bath in 1749; St Georges Hall, opposite Lime Street station, designed as a competition entry by the 25-year-old Harvey Lonsdale Elmes. St Georges Hall is a subtle exercise in classical elevations, finished by Cockerell after Elmes died of tuberculosis. Opposite is an imposing group of great public buildings: the Walker Art Gallery, the Picton Reading Room and the Museum of Liverpool. All are intact and in more than good order today, especially the Picton, beneficiary of an inspired recent reconstruction of the bomb-damaged library. Cockerill was also responsible for Liverpool’s monumental Bank of England branch which, said Nairn, ‘closes the view up Brunswick Street from the waterfront with a shattering drum roll.’ Vacant for years following the closure of the branch, it is now restored as an Ivy Restaurant. Not to be forgotten are the exuberant Pier Head waterfront buildings: the Liver Building, the Cunard Building, and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Building. Perhaps in the 1960s it was not possible to enter the Docks Building. Today an informed and smartly dressed tourist can slip inside, to be overwhelmed by the internal dome, inscribed with appropriate biblical text for ‘those who go down to the sea in ships’. As Nairn appreciated, the city’s great wealth trickled out beyond the city centre. Liverpool’s suburban terraced housing is modest, but so often dignified with touches of fancy, in porches, bays and details in polychromatic brickwork. For Nairn this was evidence of prodigious self-respect in these humble buildings. And that self-respect extended to minor public buildings. Singled out for attention was Everton’s water tower, a municipal build of ‘Piranesian splendour’. Equally impressive, and still just clinging to life, is the Italianate Christchurch, Kensington, a big statement in one of the city’s roughest and toughest wards, now returned to religious use after a long stint as secondhand furniture warehouse. Let’s hope Everton Water Works. The tower was built in 1857 and the pump house in the 1860s. (Photo: Peter de Figueiredo) Liverpool’s waterfront seen across the River Mersey from Birkenhead (Photo: Peter de Figueiredo) The atrium and dome of the Port of Liverpool Building, built in 1907 as the head office of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (Photo: Patrick M Higgins)
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