The Classical Influence in Liverpool

St George’s Hall was to have a great and lasting influence on the architecture of Liverpool. While others towns and cities, Manchester for example, were moving towards High Victorian Gothic, Liverpool still followed the classical style well into the 1880s. ‘The Builder’ even complained in 1856 that John Foster Junior’s classical influence meant that the architect Thomas Rickman, an advocate of the Gothic movement, had to leave Liverpool to get work.

This continuing classical influence is evident in numerous commercial, religious and civic buildings in the city centre. Examples can be found in Quentin Hughes’ ‘Liverpool – City of Architecture’, but it is worth noting here four of those in William Brown Street which complement St George’s Hall and make up what might be called Liverpool’s cultural quarter. They are:

The Liverpool Museum and Library (1859 – 60, Thomas Allom and John Weightman)

The Walker Art Gallery (1873 - 77, Sherlock and Vale)

Picton Reading Room (1875 – 79, Cornelius Sherlock)

County Sessions House (1882 – 84, F. & G. Holme)

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