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Below: The Liver Buildings (with the two clock towers) was the first large scale ferro concrete steel framed building in the world. The Empire State and Chrysler Buildings in New York were based on its construction.
Below: The mother of all modern Buildings, Oriel Chambers. The first steel framed glass curtain walled building built 1864. John Root the architect of the first high buildings in the USA, studied in Liverpool when this was built. Senitel Buildings in Chicago even has the oriel windows too, except it is higher. The elevator has not been invented when Oriel Chambers was built, so only 5 floors high.
The second was 16 Cook St (1866) my favourite building. The glass clad spiral staircase could be from the 1980s. Both designed by local architect Peter Ellis, who fell into obscurity.
The USA, in New York and Chicago, based their early skyscrapers on the designs 30 years later.
Below: Lime St station. There are two arches. Building started in 1833. The station was modified and the roof was completed in l849. It was then the largest iron roof used on any building, and the largest single span, the first time such a construction had been used to cover a railway station.
Not only that:
1858 The world's first steel ship, the Ma Roberts, built in for Dr. Livingstone's African exploration by the Laird shipyard.
1862 The Jones Quiggin shipyard built the first steel ship to cross the Atlantic, the Banshee. Built for the Confederate states of America as a fast blockade runner.
1920 The world?s first all welded hulled ship, Fullagar, built by the Laird?s shipyard.
Transporting kits of ironwork around the work and assembling on site was common. This bridge is at Victoria Falls Zimbabwe, although built in Middlesborough not Liverpool. This is an impressive bridge for 1905:
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