Remembering Liverpool Structures - The Albany Building

This impressive building on Old Hall Street was constructed in 1856 at the height of the city's expansion to provide four storeys of office accommodation above a floor of warehousing for wealthy banker of Hooton Hall and race horse owner Richard Naylor, and was designed by J.K. Colling a scholarly London architect. One of Liverpool's most highly regarded works of architecture, in style it is a very free Renaissance design with highly individual decorative treatment based on natural forms.

 

Constructed from sandstone and designed in the classical style seen across the city, it was built as a meeting place and headquarters for the city's many wealthy cotton brokers, and contained offices and meeting rooms, together with warehousing facilities in the basement. It is one of the earliest examples of Victorian offices in Liverpool with its lavish interior including a central atrium lined with crystal chandeliers and extending to the full height of the building. The central courtyard was originally uncovered, to provide good light for the brokers to examine their cotton samples.

 

With its front on Old Hall Street it has eleven bays and the basement is constructed in rusticated granite, the ground floor in rusticated ashlar, and the upper storeys in brick with stone dressings. The round-arched entrance is in the central bay, and consists of a granite surround with a keystone with carvings in the spandrels. Over this is a frieze and a segmental pediment. Along the top of the building is a carved frieze, a cornice supported by brackets, and a balustraded parapet. The main entrance contains fine cast iron gates made to look like wrought iron and inside the coffered and barrel vaulted passage leads to the central courtyard, containing red granite columns and decorated with elaborate plasterwork. The spacious courtyard is crossed by two elegant cast iron bridges, each approached by a delicate spiral staircase, and more ironwork can be seen in the ingenious top lit corridors which run the full length of the building.

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/10/remembering-liverpool-structures-cotton.html