With a grand, towering reddish brown structure, Grand Central Hall is reminiscent of Liverpool's great history and is possibly a structure that many will wonder as to its original use.
At the beginning of the 20th
century the Methodist Church commissioned the
building of around 99 'Central Halls' in UK
cities. Dr. Angela Connelly, of the
Manchester Architecture Research Centre, says
that only 18 of these building are still in the
possession of the Methodist church, with 27 of them
having been lost to demolition or war damage, the
rest decorate our city centres, although few
passers-by would suspect that they were once
churches. This isn't surprising since the
intention was to provide, "... something
more modern in an attempt to reach the
religiously indifferent and economically
disadvantaged. They were to be centres of
civic life: not just for worship but for
entertainment, leisure and education capable
of seating up to 2,500 worshipers. Their design was deliberately different from
conventional church architecture to appeal
to non-churchgoers."
The Grand Central Hall in
Liverpool is a wonderful example. The 'Liverpool
Monuments' website says that, "It
was designed as a new kind of church,
looking more like a department store and
the ground floor was always intended to
contain sub-let shops or other businesses.
Pevsner describes the architectural style
as promiscuously mixing 'Classical,
Byzantine, Gothic and Jacobean'."
Opened in 1905 as the Central Hall of the Liverpool Wesleyan Mission, replacing Renshaw Street Unitarian Chapel, it was built to an Art Nouveau design by the Bolton architects Bradshaw and Gass. It is an architecturally complex building with grand entrance tower and dome built as a memorial to Charles Garrett (who had always disapproved of grandiose projects of this kind). It seated 3,115 people and cost no less than £52,681. The Hall very quickly became the centre for a whole variety of religious and social activities, which steadily grew over its 108 years, and was also used from its opening until at least 1944 as a cinema. In 1908, it became one of Liverpool’s first cinemas called The New Century Picture Hall, then in 1933 when the old Liverpool Philharmonic Hall was destroyed by fire the orchestra moved into the Grand Central Hall for a period of 6 years until their new concert hall was completed. The Methodist Church sold the hall in 1990 and since then it has seen a number of refurbishments.
Major restoration work was undertaken in 1997/98 before, from late 1998 to around 2000 or 2001, the building became the Barcelona Bar and nightclub. Following the closure of the Quiggins Centre on School Lane in 2006, a dozen of the 30 plus traders relocated to the Grand Central Hall whilst others moved on to and around Bold Street or dissolved themselves. In early 2007, Roscoe Hall on the first floor opened with many new and diverse shops and in October 2011 a performance area opened in the domed area. Known as 'The Dome', the venue had a capacity of 1,200 and was used to host film, theatre and music events. In 2018 the Grand Central Hall was taken over by local business owners, who redeveloped the Hall, basements and upper floors. The New Liverpool Grand Central integrates luxury hotels with boutique bars, live music and event spaces, a wedding hall and an assemblage of restaurants making up the food-hall, The Grand Bazaar. The 4 venues that will make up the Grand Central Irish Village are the Liffey, Nelly Foleys, Roe's Bar and lastly Smokie Mo's. Liverpool’s connections with Ireland are legendary and the scouse accent owes much to the arrival of Irish migrants to the city in the 19th Century. Events manager Hayley Smitton said in December 2020, "The whole of the Grand Central is essentially broken up into 3 areas. The dome theatre space, the hotel and the huge space that was known for years as the Barcelona. That space is huge and across several levels and is too big for one site."
The building is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/01/remembering-liverpool-structures_26.html
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