The Manchester & Liverpool District Banking Co., founded in Stockport in 1829, became known as District Bank after a century of mergers. By the 1960s, following a merger with County, it had over 590 branches across England and Wales, with head offices in Manchester. In 1962, it was acquired by National Provincial Bank, which then sought a new northern HQ which resulted in a limited competition being announced. The site of The York Hotel at 55 King Street was acquired - historically notable as the venue for the formation of the Anti-Corn League in 1838 and home to the first Manchester Corporation meetings.
In 1963, seven architects were invited to the competition, which would be judged by Sir Basil Spence and L C Howitt - Manchester’s City Architect at the time. Three firms withdrew before the competition opened, with the remaining John Madin Design Group, Brett and Pollen and Edward D. Mills & Partners, all proposing podium and tower configurations, mainly informed by the constraints of the site and inhibiting light angles. After the competition however, the bank was able to acquire another 23ft of land to the east of the site which allowed any potential building to be shifted up the slight hill that is King Street. The winning design, by Casson Conder & Partners, still took the daylight angles into consideration, proposing a ‘dumbbell’ shaped plan to maximise natural light, with the top floor tapering in to mitigate shadowing.
Casson Conder & Partners was formed by Sir Hugh Casson and Neville Conder. Winning the Manchester competition was around the time of perhaps the firms most famous work - the Elephant House at London Zoo and both share some design similarities, most notably the ribbed dark granite of the exterior and tapering roof lines.
As well as the challenges of light on the site, the architect and client were initially at odds over the design, with the bank imposing requirements on room sizes and specific activities within the building with the architects keen to have more freedom in how the building should function.
The planning authorities had insisted that the building should be no more than 12 storeys high and whilst some other competition entries stretched to this height the Casson Conder design is 7 storeys above ground, with 4 basement levels.
Architecturally, the building took a bold departure from its Victorian and early 20th-century neighbours, introducing a distinctive form to King Street. It is an unusually shaped building in plan and angular format, almost as though it is carved out of a solid mass. This sets it apart not only from the historical buildings around it, but also from its contemporaries in the city.
There are no other buildings like it in Manchester and few to compare it to outside London. Whilst the hand tooled ribbed Swedish granite had also been used at London Zoo, its use in Manchester was also perhaps judicious. Early 1960’s Manchester had yet to see the effects of the Clean Air Act and most buildings were covered in a layer of black soot. Manchester was a dark city, so the use of the dark granite was, at the time, totally in keeping with most of the buildings on King Street and across the city. It was only when the buildings were cleaned of the soot in the 1980s and 1990’s did 55 King Street become something more of an outlier. Perhaps another intentional or unintentional reason for the choice of such a brooding material was to give the bank’s customers a feeling of security and assuredness that their money was in safe hands and not being squandered on ostentatious headquarter buildings.
Despite this, when the building was completed in January 1970, the final cost was £12 million - the most expensive office building in Manchester at the time. Upon its completion, the original client National Provincial had merged with Westminster Bank to become the National Westminster Bank and as such 55 King Street became a National Westminster Bank building. The merger had no effect on the design, but the building thus became a regional office rather than a headquarter building.
The highlight of the building was the banking hall, accessed by an elegant low staircase at the King Street entrance and an escalator from Chapel Walks at the rear. This was a brilliant contrast to the dark exterior, with a high, bright central space rising three storeys and clad in bright white Pentelicon marble and unadorned plaster. It was cool and minimal, and the architects had originally planned an even more open plan design but the rise in armed robberies in the 1960s and the introduction of computers meant that security screens had to be fitted to the banking counters and more desk space was given over to computer terminals. Despite this, the banking hall remained beautifully minimalist. A large spherical stainless clock loomed over the atrium, like a futuristic all-seeing eye, adding to the unashamedly modern atmosphere within the building.
It was one of the best modernist interior spaces in the city, but it was removed in the 1990’s when the building was vacated by NatWest and the building refurbished. Its removal meant a listing application, that was being considered by English Heritage at the time, was turned down.
Despite the loss of the banking hall, 55 King Street remains an imposing and distinctive feature on King Street and is a definite highlight of Manchester’s canon of post war commercial buildings.