Birmingham City Hall features a superbly balanced Baroque facade
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Birmingham Council House
By David Jennings*
17 January 2010: Birmingham’s magnificent Council House (and not to be confused with the equally impressive Town Hall adjacent to it, which is a concert hall) houses the Council Offices and Council Chamber, as well as the City’s Art Gallery and Museum.
The Council House was built in 1874-9 to designs by the architect H R Yeoville Thomason. Facing Victoria Square, the front façade is a superbly balanced Baroque composition, whose centrepiece is a wide and deep porte-cochere, behind which is a central arch with a mosaic tympanum by the Italian firm of Salviati. This is flanked by Corinthian columns, carrying a pediment with a carved relief depicting Britannia receiving the manufacturers of Birmingham. Behind the arch is a high drum with a Baroque dome. Inside, a grand staircase beneath the dome leads up to a suite of 3 reception rooms on the first floor, with Corinthian pilasters and decorated coffered ceilings.
The first extension, built to house the museum in 1881-85, was built in a similar style, and was also designed by Yeoville Thomason. Its main features are on the left-hand side of the building, facing Chamberlain Square, and include a tall clock tower with a steeply pitched tiled roof, known colloquially as ‘Big Brum’, and a grand off-centre entrance, again with an imposing three-storey portico and topped with a sculpted pediment. In 1911-19 a further extension was built in the Edwardian Renaissance style by Ashley and Newman, linked to the rear of the Council House by a broad arch over Edmund Street.
The squares in front and to the left of the Council House have recently been refurbished, and form, with the Town Hall and City Library, an attractive and imposing group of public buildings. The library’s modern Brutalist design is, however, in stark contrast to its neighbours and has provoked mixed views from critics: completed in 1974, it is in the form of an inverted concrete ziggurat, by the architect John Madin, and is based closely on the design of Kallman, McKinnell and Knowles's Boston City Hall (1963-68) in the USA.
* David Jennings is an independent management consultant working on policy and strategy development and stakeholder engagement, including government and business relationship management. He is an Associate of Indepen and Achill Management
Birmingham Council Chamber is still used for full monthly council meetings
Also by David Jennings
Cardiff City Hall
Cathays Park in Cardiff is one of Europe’s finest Civic Centres, built in the early years of the 20th century to reflect Cardiff’s rapid development as a major city as it became, by 1900, the largest coal exporting port in the world.
Construction of the Civic Centre began in 1898, and now contains the National Museum of Wales, the University, administrative buildings of the Welsh Assembly, the Law Courts and, as its crowning glory, Cardiff City Hall.
Completed in 1904 and built in white Portland stone, this magnificent building in the French Baroque style was designed by the firm Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards after an architectural competition. The overall design includes an imposing central dome and entrance portico, with an offset 194ft (60m) bell tower. The external statuary represents the City’s three rivers, the Taff, Rhymney and Ely. More