The Produce Exchange Building encompassing the Fruit Exchange sandstone building at Nos. 10-16 Victoria Street, Liverpool is Grade II listed and was built in
1888 as a railway goods depot for the London and North Western Railway
(to serve Exchange Station on Tithebarn Street) and was converted into a
fruit exchange in 1923 by James B. Hutchins with a hipped slate
roof, Flemish Renaissance style. It then became the main trading point for fruit within the city and
dealt with the majority of fruit imports coming into Liverpool where traders
would go to purchase bulk inventories of fruit.
Hundreds of people would cram into the exchange halls and bid for
the fruit which had just arrived in Liverpool from all around the world. The lower levels were used as warehouses and storage for the goods that were sold.. The upper floors housed
the two main exchanges which are both semicircular in nature with rows
of seats where the traders would have sat during the auctions and a
central bench where the auctioneers stood to conduct the sales.
Victoria Street is one of Liverpool’s more recent main streets constructed circa 1860 to reduce congestion in the city. The area had been one of narrow streets and slum housing interspersed with industry. The Produce Exchange built later in 1902, and adjoining the Fruit Exchange, represented the growth and development of trade within Liverpool during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the emergence of Victoria Street as the regional centre of the fruit and provisions trade. The Fruit Exchange had an irregular J-shaped plan with the front block containing offices, the rear block containing exchange halls and offices and the main entrance halls and stairs set to centre part of building between front and rear blocks. Immediately inside the front door to the right hand side were the offices and the entrance/stair area featured parquet flooring and bluish-grey tiling in the stairwells. Through the entrance hall, which spread in various directions, there were two main flights of stairs up to the top floors. The upper floors housed the two main exchanges which were both semicircular in nature with rows of seats where the traders sat during the auctions and a central bench where the auctioneers stood to conduct the sales.
The first auction chamber had tiered seating and the areas in front of the seats were where the fruit was brought up on a pulley system from the warehouses below. Dominating this main auction room was the huge circular skylight with great natural light coming in through this huge dome above, with the room only used during the daytime. A doorway led into a second slightly smaller hall with a large curved balcony, with a nice switch plate behind the podium, featuring the various names of companies based in the Fruit Exchange, one such example is MACGEORGE & JARDINE Ltd.
Fruit was displayed on bins in front
of the
podium having been hoisted during auctions from the cellar using small wheels at the front. The fruit would also be brought in from the adjoining warehouses for display and placed in the containers below the auctioneers platform where it would be weighed. A central lift shaft ran down the centre of the building.
Warehouses directly behind in the Mathew Street area were used to store the fruit sold at the exchange and were eventually converted into licensed premises, and this part of the former Fruit Exchange included the likes of Rubber Soul and Eric's and other bars and nightclubs. They also contributed to the unique smell inside the Cavern Club that people often talk about. In 2019 the JSM Group applied to Liverpool City Council to turn the building into a 92-bedroom hotel, complete with a bar and restaurant and this was granted approval in April 2020. Many will remember and will have used the former National Provincial Bank Ltd. (early 1920s), later the NatWest, which occupied 8A Victoria Street and closed in 2009.
see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/12/remembering-liverpool-structures-george.html
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