My Favourite Building: Royal Exchange, Manchester
What’s your favourite building?
The Royal Exchange building, Cross Street, Manchester
When was it built?
It was built 1874 and extended in 1922. However, this is the 3rd incarnation – the first dated back to 1792.
What was its original function?
It was Manchester’s Exchange – a global trading floor for commodities which was at the centre of Lancashire’s cotton and textile trades. The part of the hall that you can see is only half of the trading floor; when it was enlarged in the 1930s it was the largest floor of its kind in England. The original trading board still displays the stock prices from its final day of trading in 1968.
What is the style of architecture?
A Victorian classical, stately pile… with a theatre resembling a spaceship inside it… An amazing mix!
What do you like about it? How is it used?
I was first struck by its internal beauty, but have come to love it for playing such an important role for Manchester throughout its life. In the time of the industrial revolution, Manchester was at the forefront of technological age, and the exchange was a symbol of its economic power.
The Exchange has been bombed twice – during WW2, and damaged by the IRA bomb in 1996. The force of the latter explosion is said to have shifted the whole building a few centimetres on its foundations. But it was fixed! It is a symbol of Manchester’s power to regenerate, its endurance.
The Royal Exchange Theatre is an amazing creative space, and one of the best theatres I’ve ever been to, anywhere.
It rivals anything in London for professional and innovative productions, and unusually it’s executed “in the round”, numbering it among the few theatres in the UK to offer this format on a permanent basis. The compact space means no one is very far from the action – intimate and always amazing!
