593. Alfred Waterhouse, Town Hall,

Manchester, 1867-1877 (United Kingdom)

A symbol of Victorian pride in industry, the Manchester Town Hall is also a tour de force of the Gothic Revival in England. Granted city status only in 1853, Manchester waited to demonstrate its new economic importance by the construction of a grand new civic centre. Waterhouse, later the architect of the Natural History Museum in London, beat out 136 other entries in a competition to design the Town Hall, which had to be built on an awkward triangular site. The style chosen was the currently fashionable 13th-century Early English Gothic, which also paid tribute to the medieval origins of Manchester’s textile trade. The picturesque skyline is dominated by an 85-metre-tall Bell Tower over the main entrance. The exterior walls have an ashlar facing of sandstone and statues of important civic figures. Similarly, the central Great Hall features twelve murals by Ford Madox Brown showing scenes from city history. The entrance hall has an impressive vaulted ceiling and floor mosaics featuring bees, symbols of the city as a ‘hive of industry.’ One of the first buildings to be heated by forced air, the Town Hall has been cited by Norman Foster as a decisive factor in his early decision to enter the field of architecture.