Liverpool Waterfront by Jim Media via Flickr

It seems only yesterday that I was bemoaning the uncertainty of the future for Liverpool’s built environment (oh, wait… it was).

Now, on the same day that we can celebrate the historic Stanley Park and 16 other Liverpool parks getting a Green Flag award, there are confusing rumours of Peel Holdings’ plans to transform Merseyside’s docklands.

English Heritage have expressed their concern that the schemes – which originally wanted to erect dozens of skyscrapers across both waterfronts – would damage the context of the World Heritage site, centred on the Three Graces.

In response, Peel have scaled back the plans, now with just two groups of tall buildings between Princes and Clarence Docks. The number of tall buildings is lower than was planned in 2007, with the group at Clarence Dock being reduced from 15 to seven towers.

Meanwhile however, more success for Peel over the Mersey, with the Wirral Waters project expected to be granted planning permission by councillors next week.

In other news…

OK, if all that was a bit much for one day, here’s a more… lovely story.

Another Graceful View, by Max/マックス via Flickr

It’s nearly here. You don’t like it, I don’t like it, but the controversial Mann Island development is forever nearer completion. The Liverpool Echo were granted exclusive access inside.

There’s mention of exhibitions, which must be good (though whether this will be a compliment to or a conflict with the new museum remains to be seen), and then there are the “half a dozen top restaurants and … major chains”. What Liverpool waterfront certainly needs are more major chains, right?

But this blog is about history, development and change, not economics (and certainly not shopping). What it’s also about is landscape, and it’s the context of this building which troubles me and plenty of other people.

As modern architecture goes, I quite like it. Sleek, modern, shiny, it’s like a big iBrick. It’s easier on the eye than the One Park West apartments across the Strand with their spidery framework on display.

But as news reports have highlighted recently, and other bloggers too in more personal channels, it has cut off expensive views from other buildings in the area, and destroyed the best, possibly most iconic view of the World Heritage Site from the said Strand.

Plans are afoot to turn the north docklands into a new Shanghai, and the area towards Stanley Dock in the north is a bit cut off, though development is moving in that direction. If this building had been put further north, although it would have clashed just as horribly with the massive brick warehouses, it would have been the right height for the city, keeping that intimate, human-scale feel that we all enjoy about our town, and increased the modern variety that those docks are getting.

However, keeping it away from the Three Graces would maintain that area’s all-important coherence, of proud architecture which has stood the test of time.

What do you think? Is this the right building in the wrong place? Where would you prefer to see it? North Liverpool? Kirkby? Shanghai?

Liverpool Waterfront, by adebⓞnd, via Flickr

There’s a lot of bits of interest dotted around the place at the moment, so tonight I’m going to concentrate on the serious stuff, with a couple of more fun things later in the week!

Understanding your local history

Local groups are some of the most important people to help protect the historic parts of our towns and cities. Along with planners, developers and local government, they have the greatest influence on what happens (or doesn’t happen) to historic buildings.

English Heritage have recognised this in their latest guidance notes called Understanding Place (see the Related Publications link on the right). The documents focus on Historic Area Assessments, which are one method of ‘characterisation’ which aims to assess the significance of a historic place through objective research using maps and other documents (it’s a bit like what I do for Historic Liverpool!).

If you’re part of a community group, or it’s your job to study local history and archaeology in a planning and development context, download the free PDFs from EH’s website.

On a wider scope, English Heritage are also asking for your opinion on the National Heritage Protection Plan (NHPP). There’s a survey linked to from their NHPP web page.

Merger questions for two of Liverpool’s major agencies

Liverpool Vision (public sector body dealing with regeneration) and the Mersey Partnership (part-public funded, concerned with tourism and investment) may merge as part of efficiency savings by Liverpool Council.

A report is being written by Professor Michael Parkinson of John Moores University, after the council’s new leader Joe Anderson ordered a review. The North West Development Agency (NWDA), as major funders of both bodies, are also in support of the report. Anderson said: “I want to make sure we are efficient and delivering the best possible services and that overlaps and duplication are taken out of the system”.

Do you think a merger will have a positive effect on Liverpool? Or will any cuts risk the city’s continued resurgence?

And finally…

What do you really think of the Mann Island developments? I mean – really? Now’s your chance to let Matt Brook, the man responsible for the “people-orientated approach for design” at Mann Island, know. For more, through-gritted-teeth, details, go to the new Seven Streets website.

They’re article Total Eclipse of the Heart is quite, well, heartfelt too.

Liverpool One by Eugene Regis, via Flickr

Liverpool has once again won a slew of architecture prizes in this year’s RIBA awards.

Awards were given to Liverpool One, Sites 1 & 7, the Pier Head Canal Link (which I personally love, and which is some consolation for the Carbuncle Cup awarded to the Ferry Terminal last year) and the John Moores Art and Design Academy This means that three out of the five North West winners are from Merseyside.

A lot of the awards went to educational projects (including LJMU), and it’s been noted that this may be the last time education has such a chance as this. A moratorium on new school buildings has since been announced as part of the new government’s cost-cutting measures.

Landscapes get Lottery windfall

The Heritage Lottery have announced that they are giving grants of between £250,000 and £2m for ten countryside areas, known for their historic natural landscapes. The aim of the Landscape Partnerships programme is to encourage communities to become interested and involved in preserving their local heritage. While none of the areas nominated this week are urban (or, indeed, man-made), it seems to fit with the Conservative’s ideas of ‘Big Society’, and it may only be a matter of time before this kind of scheme spreads to other heritage areas such as our own World Heritage Site.

Roundup

A few other bits and pieces… The new minister for Heritage and the Built Environment is John Penrose (Conservative), who is also the minister for gambling and horse racing! Make of that what you will.

As part of the BBC’s History of the World project, they showed The Tale of Two Rival Cities. This is the story of Liverpool and Manchester, and how the two most important cities in the north-west vied for supremacy during the Industrial Revolution.

In reality they relied on one another: Liverpool was the gateway for the raw material for Manchester’s cotton manufacturing. It was a symbiosis, but Liverpool gentlemen overtaxed the Manchester men, leading to the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal to avoid Mersey tolls.

It’s a great programme, hosted by Stuart Maconie (from Wigan, halfway between the two cities) and covers everything from slavery and steam engines to gentrification and the trade unions. It’s available on the BBC iPlayer for a short while.

The Financial Times has a special report on its website entitled The Future of Cities. Although I haven’t had a chance to look much into it, it appears to be a huge resource on architecture, business, planning and the environment. If you want to read anything on current urban thinking, then this is probably a good place to start.

And finally: I’ve had to disable trackbacks and pingbacks. These are similar to comments, where a paragraph of your blog will appear below a post of mine if you mention it on your own site. And, like comments, they’re open to abuse by the less salubrious parts of the web. It’s one of the risks of blog-writing, I suppose, but let me take this opportunity to let you know that you can still comment! Please do – I’d love to know your own views on what I’ve written about!

Liverpool Metropolitan RC Cathedral, by Jonathan Gill via Flickr

A new book is released this month by Stephen Bayley, and published by RIBA.

Liverpool: Shaping the City is a large and colourful exploration of the city’s built history. It includes development, old and new and brings in photographs from the early 20th Century when some of Merseyside’s most iconic buildings were being constructed.

We learn in the Foreword by RIBA’s president Ruth Reed that Liverpool can lay claim to three world firsts in architecture: the first building to use skyscraper technology (Oriel Chambers in Water Street), the first wet dock (no prizes for guessing) and the first hydraulic cargo-handling system.

Perhaps I’ll come back to a full review of this book once I’ve read it (it only arrived this morning!), but suffice to say it looks to include good coverage of how Liverpool has developed as a city, and how it does and will continue to change as the years progress.

Meanwhile, you can read a column in the Times by Stephen Bayley, How Liverpool returned from the dead which introduces some ideas from the book. His main point is that you can ‘design your way out of a depression’ by building cities which bring joy to people. From a personal point of view, I whole-heartedly agree (though my cynicism would reword it as ‘design yourself towards the end of a depression), which is why I – and others – get so animated when an ugly construction is plonked down in a beloved vista.

My favourite quote from the article, and one which almost single-handedly justifies this blog and my interests in Liverpool’s buildings, is “We make our environments and then our environments make us”. He suggests putting it on a T-shirt, and I just might.

A history of Lewis’s

The corner entrance of Lewis's Department Store, Ranelagh Street, Liverpool

David Lewis founded a small shop selling men’s and boy’s clothing in 1856. The sale of women’s clothes began in 1864 , and by the 1870s Lewis’s was a full department store, having added sections for shoes and tobacco.

Branches were opened in other cities, beginning with Manchester in 1877 and followed by Birmingham, Sheffield and Leicester.

The building burnt down in a famous fire of 1886, and was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. Nevertheless, it was rebuilt each time, and was refurbished in 1957, including the installation of the statue ‘Liverpool Resurgent’ to symbolise the city’s renewed vigour following the horrors of the recent conflict.

The fifth floor of Lewis’s has taken on an almost mythical status. In the store’s heyday, the 1950s, the fifth floor was the place to dine in the self-service cafeteria or the Red Rose restaurant, or to get your hair done in the salon. A large mural decorated the walls, but this and the other features were hidden from the public in the 1980s when the floor was closed. It’s now found a new burst of publicity as it becomes the focus of an exhibition at the National Conservation Centre.

Lewis’s went into administration in 1991, and all but the Liverpool store were sold off, the majority to competitor Owen Owen. The Liverpool store continued to trade though, until it went into liquidation in 2007. Having been bought by Vergo Retail Ltd in the same year it managed to soldier on until the lease on the iconic building came up for renewal. Due to development of the area, the company was no longer allowed to stay. Despite efforts at negotiation, it remains uncertain whether Lewis’s will have a place in the new Liverpool Central Village.

Trying to come to terms with the loss of an iconic Liverpool company, Susan Lee explained that Lewis’s ceased to be ‘a player’ in the city. Recent development meant that the focus shifted to the waterfront and Liverpool One. Also in recent years the Big Dig cut off Lewis’s from its customers, and was no longer the highly fashionable place – complete with a lady behind a lectern to welcome you – to shop.

40 Ranelagh Street

Lewis's original Department Store, 1864

David Lewis opened his first small store on Ranelagh Street, Liverpool in 1856. It was a small, glass-fronted shop as shown in the image on the Lewis’s web site.

It expanded piece by piece between 1910-12 into much larger premises, which were gutted by fire in 1888. The building was once again heavily damaged, this time by German bombs, during the Second World War. It is the 1957 building, complete with ‘Dickie Lewis’, which remains standing today, and which will stay as part of the redevelopment of the area.

This latest Lewis’s store was designed in 1947 by Gerald de Courcy Fraser, and constructed by Fraser, Sons and Geary. It is built from a steel frame with a Portland stone façade.

There are several classical influences in the building. Red granite columns are topped with Ionic capitals, while the columns on the fourth floor are Tuscan in style. A two-storey collonade above the corner entrance have Doric-style half columns.

The statue Liverpool Resurgent is accompanied by relief panels depicting scenes of childhood, the figures in which are modelled on the sculptor Jacob Epstein’s own children and grandchildren. These represent the younger generation which Liverpool was being rebuilt for.

One of the most interesting features of the building are the lifts, of which some are still in place, but which are to be removed as part of the new Liverpool Central Village. These lifts are original features of the building, and were operated by a member of staff through use of a lever. There were no controls for the customers! Both the fold-down seats and the lever mechanism are currently still in the building, and are mentioned in the listing description. The passenger lifts at the south east of the building still have ‘clocks’ with coloured lights to indicate which member of staff was required on the shop floor.

In addition, parts of the original customer escalators survive to the fourth and fifth floors.

The rediscovered fifth floor has wood panelling, panelled doors and a tiled floor corridor. A ten foot high Festival of Britain mural on the eastern wall is made of hand painted and hand printed tiles. Another mural on the south wall shows geometric patterns and cutlery, probably designed by the same artist.

References

Lewis’s closure brings end to colourful history (Liverpool Echo)

Susan Lee on the reasons why Lewis’s department store in Liverpool is facing closure (Liverpool Echo)

Oldest department store to close (BBC News)

Lewis’s closes down the shutters after 154 years (BBC News)

Lewis’s Liverpool, exterior, 1931 (Liverpool Museums)

Lewis’s Department Store (Listed Buildings Online)

Lewis’s (Wikipedia)

Sugar Silo & Conveyor, Huskisson Dock, Liverpool, by David Barrie via Flickr

Hello! It looks like my hopes for getting the second historic maps article to you this week have come to nought. It’s amazing how much time arranging a wedding soaks up!

So, before I head off on honeymoon, as I can’t bring you the usual detail of stories, I’ll resort to the bulleted list:

• The BBC have shown archive footage of the 1960 fire in Henderson’s department store. A link to the Inside Out programme which showed the footage is available from the BBC Liverpool article on the fire.
• One of the earliest railway tunnels – Bourne tunnel in Rainhill – has been listed at Grade II. Buildings are listed if they are of nationally significant architectural value.

Well, I hope that can tide you over until mid-April, when I return. I promise much more exciting articles in the weeks and months to come, on all aspects of the history of the city of Liverpool. Until then: au revoir.

Plans for a ‘Central Village‘ have been on the cards for a few years already.

Robin Brown on the Liverpool Culture Blog is right to worry about what will go in the new ‘Central Village Liverpool’ . What with Liverpool One and the new developments from Paradise Street up to Renshaw Street, Liverpool is at risk from each area pulling customers away the others. If this development is to work, it will have to have its own distinctive character.

However optimistic we are, Liverpool has only got so much money to spend, especially at the moment. As this is near Lime Street, there is a good chance Central Village will attract visitors from outside the city, but if it apes the rest of the new developments, Liverpool will lose its character, and it’s often bold independent shopping soul.

Good luck to it.

World Museum Liverpool, by Secret Pilgrim via Flickr

First some museum news: the Echo is reporting that National Museums Liverpool had to pay landowners Downing £750,000 as the new Museum of Liverpool building broke a covenant drawn up in 1963.

The covenant dictated that no building be constructed within 40 feet of the River Mersey, and any building here would not be more than 40 feet tall. This was to maintain the lines of sight between the Port of Liverpool building and offices at the Albert Dock. This document was signed in 1963 when the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board sold the land the museum now stands on to Liverpool Corporation.

It seems that NML’s David Fleming chose to pay the money upfront before Dowling were tempted into suing for a predicted £70,000.

Visitor numbers up for Liverpool museums

Better publicity for NML comes in the form of visitor numbers to all the museums on Merseyside, which rose to 2.2m in 2009 from just over 2m in 2007.

Of course, 2008 was going to take some beating, so it’s good to know that the trend from the last ‘normal’ year is a positive one. You can only imagine that with the new museum next year, visitor numbers will increase again.

More details and figures for the individual museums are available on the Art in Liverpool blog.

Lewis’s lives on – for a little while longer

Now that Lewis’s has announced it’s closing down, memories turn to its ‘golden years’ in the last century.

A new exhibition by photographer Stephen King is being shown at the Conservation Centre, focussing on the fabled ‘Fifth Floor’. This is where the old cafe was, along with the biggest hair salon in the world. It’s also home to an amazing range of (now) retro design – bright colours in the post-WWII era, yellow walls, orange ceilings and blue chairs, and egg-shaped hair-dryers and 1950s lino floors.

Photographs also include portraits of Lewis’s employees past and present, to breathe some life into the eerie space.

The exhibition runs from 26th February until 30th August. You can follow the exhibition on the Lewis’s Fifth Floor blog.

Abbey Road studios finally listed

You may be aware of the current saga of Abbey Road studios in London; its future uncertain while rumours flew that it would be sold off by owners EMI.

Well, the Culture Minister Margaret Hodge has announced that she would be taking on board English Heritage’s recommendations, and would be listing the Georgian townhouse which contains the studios.

English Heritage first proposed that the building be listed in 2003, but had been ignored until this great publicity opportunity fell at the minister’s feet. Even EH had originally been reluctant to recommend listing, but current listing criteria include ‘historic’ as well as ‘architectural’ significance. And Abbey Road certainly has that.

Queen Avenue, off Castle Street, by M D Greaney

Over the past few weeks I’ve come across a handful of very interesting looking sites for those of you with a local history interest. The best thing about them is that they’re after your input, so pop along and see what you can contribute!

Building History is a specialised wiki site, much like the (in)famous Wikipedia and the Liverpool Wiki. It encourages users to submit information about any road or building to its database, even the one you live in! Almost 200 roads and nearly 300 buildings have been added, and the site’s only been online since October 2009.

All you need is an email address, and you can get going. The Warwick page is the most complete, so use that as a template. Liverpool is there, waiting for someone to add something, though note that it’s placed in Lancashire!

For those privacy-concerned individuals (like me), it’s good to know they only allow publicly-available data to be added (census data, for example).

Liverpool Signs, Mosaics, Words and Graffiti is a set of photos on Flickr which collects together a huge number of images of… well, signs, mosaics, words and graffiti.

The most obviously interesting ones to readers of this blog are the ancient signs painted on the sides of warehouses and shops, or the tiled signs such as this Liverpool Co-operative sign in Bootle. But the collection also includes a huge number of other examples, from the formal to the most informal.

Of especial interest to me, as a ‘hidden landscape’ geek, is the boundary marker from Smithdown Road. I’m not sure whether this is a township boundary post or one for the London and North Western Railway (that’s the stamp on the marker), but Smithdown Road crosses the old boundary between the Toxteth and Wavertree townships.

Two other Flickr Groups you might be interested in are the Old Liverpool and Secret Life of Smithdown Road groups.

Finally, we have the Open Plaques project. This, in its own words, is “a service that aims to find and provide data about all the commemorative ‘plaques’ (often blue and round) that can be found across the UK and worldwide”.

You can browse their database via peoples’ names, places, or organisation, and the site wants all the plaques photographed, tagged with their geographical location, and have their colour identified. There’s a neat little graph on the home page letting you know how they’re getting on.

The data comes from a variety of sources (including English Heritage’s blue plaques site and Freedom of Information requests) which have been cleaned up for presentation on the site.

You can help them by getting in touch, or taking a photo of one and uploading it to Flickr. If you tag the photo correctly (as explained on the site) it will appear next to the relevant entry. Brilliant! All the data is free for you to reuse, and the maps are created using OpenStreetMap. You can follow the project via Twitter: @openplaques, or on their .

There are nine plaques for the city of Liverpool.