46–48 Brown Street

Ship Canal House is a building in Manchester, England, which was built in 1927 for the Manchester Ship Canal Company. The building is located on King Street, historically the centre for Manchester's banking industry. The building was designed by Harry S Fairhurst in a neo-classical style and displays some Art Deco and Edwardian Baroque motifs such as square windows and roof sculptures which were prevalent during the 1920s. It stands 46 metres tall with 11 storeys and is clad in Portland stone. It was one of the tallest office blocks in the United Kingdom when completed in 1927. The building built by J. Gerrard & Sons Ltd of Swinton was Grade II listed in 1982. Ship Canal House was sold in 2011 for £22.8 million.

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 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.

The former Manchester Law Library is a Grade II* listed building in the Venetian Gothic style at 14 Kennedy Street, Manchester. The building is notable as having housed the oldest provincial law library in England. Its architect, Thomas Hartas, is little known, and the former Law Library appears to be his only documented building. In 2015 the Manchester Incorporated Law Library Society sold the premises, and moved to new offices on Booth Street.

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.

The Manchester Stock Exchange, later a branch of the Northern Stock Exchange, is now a Grade II listed hotel. at 2–6 Norfolk Street, Manchester. It was built at a cost of £86,000, between 1904 and 1906 by Bradshaw, Gass and Hope, the Bolton architectural practice responsible for many of Manchester's iconic buildings.

53 King Street is an Edwardian Baroque bank on King Street in Manchester, England. Designed by architect Charles Heathcote, it opened in 1913 and was granted Grade II listed building status in 1974. It used to house a branch of Lloyds TSB. In 2009, the building was sold for £6 million. The building stands on the site of the old Manchester Town Hall.

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".

Manchester Cenotaph is a war memorial in St Peter's Square, Manchester, England. Manchester was late in commissioning a First World War memorial compared with most British towns and cities; the city council did not convene a war memorial committee until 1922. The committee quickly achieved its target of raising £10,000 but finding a suitable location for the monument proved controversial. The preferred site in Albert Square would have required the removal and relocation of other statues and monuments, and was opposed by the city's artistic bodies. The next choice was Piccadilly Gardens, an area already identified for a possible art gallery and library; but in the interests of speedier delivery, the memorial committee settled on St Peter's Square. The area within the square had been had been purchased by the City Council in 1906, having been the site of the former St Peter's Church; whose sealed burial crypts remained with burials untouched and marked above ground by a memorial stone cross. Negotiations to remove these stalled so the construction of the cenotaph proceeded with the cross and burials in situ. Having picked a site, it was originally proposed to choose an architect by open competition, but the memorial committee was criticised in the local press when it reserved the right to overrule the judgement of the independent assessor. A sub-committee therefore approached Sir Edwin Lutyens directly, who produced, in a matter of weeks, a variation of his design for the Cenotaph in London. The memorial consists of a central cenotaph and a Stone of Remembrance flanked by twin obelisks, all features characteristic of Lutyens' works. Raised steps either side of the Stone of Remembrance provided east-facing tribunes for the colour party in memorial parades. The cenotaph is topped by an effigy of a fallen soldier and decorated with relief carvings of the imperial crown, Manchester's coat of arms and inscriptions commemorating the dead. The structures, based on classical architecture, use abstract, ecumenical shapes rather than overt religious symbolism. In submitting the design, Lutyens stated that he envisaged the crypts and cross as remaining in place; as the cenotaph could stand on the foundations of the former church tower and the cross would serve to "consecrate the site", while there would be no explicit religious symbolism on the cenotaph itself. The memorial was unveiled on 12 July 1924 by the Earl of Derby, assisted by Mrs Bingle, a local resident whose three sons had died in the war. It cost £6,940 and the remaining funds were used to provide hospital beds. In 2014, Manchester City Council dismantled the memorial and reconstructed it at the northeast corner of St Peter's Square next to Manchester Town Hall to make room for the expanded Metrolink tram network. It is a grade II* listed structure and in 2015, Historic England recognised Manchester Cenotaph as part of a national collection of Lutyens' war memorials.

Manchester Town Hall is a Victorian, Neo-gothic municipal building in Manchester, England. It is the ceremonial headquarters of Manchester City Council and houses a number of local government departments. The building faces Albert Square to the north and St Peter's Square to the south, with Manchester Cenotaph facing its southern entrance. Designed by architect Alfred Waterhouse, the town hall was completed in 1877. The building contains offices and grand ceremonial rooms such as the Great Hall which is decorated with Ford Madox Brown's imposing Manchester Murals illustrating the history of the city. The entrance and Sculpture Hall contain busts and statues of influential figures including Dalton, Joule and Barbirolli. The exterior is dominated by the clock tower which rises to 280 feet (85 m) and houses Great Abel, the clock bell. In 1938, a detached Town Hall Extension was completed and is connected by two covered bridges over Lloyd Street. The town hall was designated as a Grade I listed building on 25 February 1952.

Manchester City Centre is the central business district of Manchester, England, within the confines of Great Ancoats Street, A6042 Trinity Way, and A57(M) Mancunian Way, which collectively form an inner ring road. The City Centre ward had a population of 17,861 at the 2011 census.Manchester city centre evolved from the civilian vicus of the Roman fort of Mamucium, on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. This became the township of Manchester during the Middle Ages, and was the site of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Manchester was granted city status in 1853, after the Industrial Revolution, from which the city centre emerged as the global centre of the cotton trade which encouraged its "splendidly imposing commercial architecture" during the Victorian era, such as the Royal Exchange, the Corn Exchange, the Free Trade Hall, and the Great Northern Warehouse. After the decline of the cotton trade and the Manchester Blitz, the city centre suffered economic decline during the mid-20th century, but the CIS Tower ranked as the tallest building in the UK when completed in 1962.The city centre acts as the transport interchange for Greater Manchester and over 7 million people live within an hour's drive of it. The 1996 Manchester bombing provided the impetus for the redevelopment of the city centre and an upturn in retail, leisure, offices and urban living. The economy of the city centre is built primarily on retail and services, accounting for nearly 40% of Grade-A city centre office space outside London.