Mosley Street

The Portico Library, The Portico or Portico Library and Gallery on Mosley Street, Manchester, is an independent subscription library designed in the Greek Revival style by Thomas Harrison of Chester and built between 1802 and 1806. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade II* listed building, having been designated on 25 February 1952, and has been described as "the most refined little building in Manchester".The library was established as a result of a meeting of Manchester businessmen in 1802 which resolved to found an "institute uniting the advantages of a newsroom and a library". A visit by four of the men to the Athenaeum in Liverpool inspired them to achieve a similar institution in Manchester. Money was raised through 400 subscriptions from Manchester men and the library opened in 1806. The library, mainly focused on 19th-century literature, was designed by Thomas Harrison, architect of Liverpool's Lyceum and built by one of the founders, David Bellhouse. Its first secretary, Peter Mark Roget, began his thesaurus here. Today the ground floor is tenanted by The Bank, a public house that takes its name from the Bank of Athens that leased the property in 1921. The library occupies what became the first floor with its entrance on Charlotte Street.

The Athenaeum in Princess Street Manchester, England, now part of Manchester Art Gallery, was originally a club built for the Manchester Athenaeum, a society for the "advancement and diffusion of knowledge", in 1837. The society, founded in 1835, met in the adjacent Royal Manchester Institution until funds had been raised for the building. The society survived financial difficulties to become the centre for Manchester's literary life. It ceased operations in 1938. Sir Charles Barry designed the Athenaeum building in the Italian palazzo style, the first such building in the city. Manchester Corporation acquired the building in 1938. In 2002, Manchester Art Gallery was extended by Hopkins Architects following an architectural design competition managed by RIBA Competitions to take in the Athenaeum. It is linked to the art gallery by a glass atrium. The Athenaeum is a grade II* listed building.

Manchester Art Gallery, formerly Manchester City Art Gallery, is a publicly owned art museum on Mosley Street in Manchester city centre, England. The main gallery premises were built for a learned society in 1823 and today its collection occupies three connected buildings, two of which were designed by Sir Charles Barry. Both of Barry's buildings are listed. The building that links them was designed by Hopkins Architects following an architectural design competition managed by RIBA Competitions. It opened in 2002 following a major renovation and expansion project undertaken by the art gallery. Manchester Art Gallery is free to enter and open six days a week, closed Mondays. It houses many works of local and international significance and has a collection of more than 25,000 objects. More than half a million people visited the museum in the period of a year, according to figures released in April 2014.

The Estate Exchange at 46 Fountain Street, Manchester, England, is a Victorian office block by Thomas Worthington. It was built as Overseers' and Churchwardens' Offices in 1852, with the top two floors being added in 1858. It is a Grade II* listed building as of 3 October 1974.The building is in an "Italian palazzo style, of red brick with sandstone dressings (and a) slate roof". Hartwell considers it the best building on Fountain Street: "Each floor is treated differently and there is a range of oeil-de-boeuf windows in stone frames in the attic".

38 and 42 Mosley Street in Manchester, England, is a double-block Victorian bank constructed between 1862 and c. 1880 for the Manchester and Salford Bank. It was occupied in 2001 by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The original block of 1862 was the "last great work" of Edward Walters, and the extension of the 1880s was by his successors Barker and Ellis. It is a Grade II* listed building.The bank, on the corner of Mosley Street and York Street, is constructed in the Italian palazzo style. The original block has three storeys and seven bays, and the extension has four bays. It is built in ashlar, with slate roofs.The ground floors are rusticated with massive pilasters, and the piano nobile above has windows with substantial pediments. The roofline carries a balustrade with urns and chimneys. The interior contains a "very fine banking hall with columns and coffered ceiling". An extension of 1975 "palely follow(s) the nineteenth century rhythms.

The Diocese of Manchester is a Church of England diocese in the Province of York, England. Based in the city of Manchester, the diocese covers much of the county of Greater Manchester and small areas of the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire.

Chinatown in Manchester, England, is the second largest Chinatown in the United Kingdom and the third largest in Europe. Its archway was completed in 1987 on Faulkner Street in Manchester city centre, which contains Chinese restaurants, shops, bakeries and supermarkets.

100 King Street, formerly the Midland Bank, is a former bank premises on King Street, Manchester, England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1928 and constructed in 1933–35. It is Lutyens' major work in Manchester and was designated a Grade II* listed building in 1974.

The former National Westminster Bank in Spring Gardens, Manchester, England, is an Edwardian bank building constructed in 1902 for Parr's Bank by Charles Heathcote. The bank is in a "bold Edwardian Baroque" style. It is a Grade II* listed building as of 25 February 1952.The bank is built of red sandstone with a corner tower and cupola, Doric columns supporting nothing but ornamental brackets, and hooded gables. The vast plate glass windows designed to illuminate the banking hall are particularly striking, each with "a large round-headed window filling the width of each bay, with moulded head, scrolled keystone, and plate-glass glazing with enriched bronze 'ferramenta' including a horizontal mid-panel, bottom panels with stained glass, and arched upper lights with margin panes".The interior is "amongst the most opulent of any of the date surviving in Manchester, and for that matter, in London". The foyer has mahogany panelling, whilst the main banking hall is walled with green marble. The stained glass, some of which is original, and the ironwork on the exterior are Art Nouveau. The bank is now a bar.

Spring Gardens is an important thoroughfare in Manchester city centre. This L-shaped street, formerly the centre of the north-west banking industry, has five Grade II listed buildings and is part of the Upper King Street conservation area.

Guardian Exchange was an underground telephone exchange built in Manchester from 1954 to 1957. It was built together with the Anchor exchange in Birmingham and the Kingsway exchange in London – all believed to provide hardened communications in the event of nuclear war; as well as linking the UK government in London to the US Government in Washington, D.C. by means of a secure and hardened transatlantic telephone cable making landfall near Oban and running through Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham. Today, the underground site is used for telephone cabling. Constructed at a depth of below 35 metres (115 ft), the tunnels are about 2 metres (80 in) in diameter. The exchange cost around £4 million (approximately £126 million in 2015 prices), part of which was funded by the United Kingdom's NATO partners.

The Reform Club in Spring Gardens, Manchester, England, is a former gentlemen's club dating from the Victorian era. Built in 1870–1871 in the Venetian Gothic style, it was designed by Edward Salomons, in collaboration with an Irish architect, John Philpot Jones. Claire Hartwell, in her Manchester Pevsner City Guide considers the club Salomon’s "best city-centre building" and it has a Grade II* heritage designation. The contract for construction was awarded to Mr Nield, a Manchester builder, and had a value of £20,000. The Reform was constructed as the club house for Manchester's Liberal Party, and was opened by Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, Liberal Foreign Secretary, on October 19, 1871.The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar with polychrome dressings and a hipped slate roof. It is of three storeys with elaborate corner turrets, oriel windows and balconies. The main entrance has extensive masonry carving, with gargoyles and “winged beasts". The interior contains a "fine” staircase, a two-storey main dining room, and a very large billiard room on the third floor, which runs the entire length of the building. The hall and staircase have linenfold panelling.Declining membership in the late 20th century led the club to merge with the Engineers' Club in 1967 to form the Manchester Club, but this also failed to prove financially viable and was wound up in 1988. The club's records are held at the John Rylands Library, Deansgate. The building is now a restaurant and bar.