The Aloft Liverpool Hotel, formerly the Royal Insurance Building, is a historic building located at 1-9 North John Street,

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Mersey Estuary and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wi ...

, England. It was built as the head office of the

Royal Insurance Royal Insurance Holdings plc was a large insurance business originating in Liverpool but based in London from the early 20th century. It merged with Sun Alliance in 1996 to form the Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group. History Formation and e ...

company.

History

The building was constructed between 1896 and 1903 as the head office of the Royal Insurance Company (Since 1996 part of the ″

RSA Insurance Group RSA Insurance Group Limited ( trading as RSA, formerly RSA Insurance Group plc and Royal and Sun Alliance) is a British multinational general insurance company headquartered in London, England. RSA has major operations in the United Kingdom, Ire ...

″). The design was the result of a competition won by James F. Doyle in 1895. The assessor for the competition was

Norman Shaw Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912), also known as Norman Shaw, was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings. He is considered to be among the g ...

, who was retained as an advisory architect for the project, but it is uncertain what part he played in it. The building is constructed around a steel frame and is the earliest example of this type of construction in the United Kingdom. It ceased to be used by the late 1980s, and its condition deteriorated so much that it was placed on the Buildings at Risk Register of

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

. In 2013 its freehold was bought by Liverpool City Council, and it was converted it into a hotel. It opened as the Aloft Liverpool Hotel on 29 October 2014. At the 20 years of the register, the renovation of the Royal Insurance Building was named as one of the successful rescues.

Architecture

New Office for the Royal Insurance Building, Liverpool

Constructed around a steel frame, the building is in

Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries are cut in beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building sto ...

, with a

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

basement and ground floor. Its architecture is described as "sumptuous Neo-Baroque on the grandest scale". The building is in four storeys with a basement and an attic. Its long front on North John Street has eleven bays, with three bays on Dale Street. The ground floor and basement are rusticated. The windows are three-light

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned window (architecture), paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double gla ...

s with round heads. Those on the first floor have

Gibbs surround A Gibbs surround or Gibbs Surround is a type of architectural frame surrounding a door, window or niche in the tradition of classical architecture otherwise known as a rusticated doorway or window. The formula is not fixed, but several of the ...

s and iron balconies. In the second and third floors the windows are recessed behind a

Doric Doric may refer to: * Doric, of or relating to the Dorians of ancient Greece ** Doric Greek, the dialects of the Dorians * Doric order, a style of ancient Greek architecture * Doric mode, a synonym of Dorian mode * Doric dialect (Scotland) * Doric ...

colonnade In classical architecture, a colonnade is a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building. Paired or multiple pairs of columns are normally employed in a colonnade which can be straight or curv ...

and

entablature An entablature (; nativization of Italian , from "in" and "table") is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and ...

. In the attic are

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space ...

s. Some of these have

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; from it, architrave "chief beam", also called an epistyle; from Greek ἐπίστυλον ''epistylon'' "door frame") is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can ...

s, keystones, and either segmental or triangular

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

s; the others are flat-topped and contain

casement window A casement window is a window that is attached to its frame by one or more hinges at the side. They are used singly or in pairs within a common frame, in which case they are hinged on the outside. Casement windows are often held open using a cas ...

s. The entrance is on the second bay from the left in North John Street. The doorway has Doric columns and is round-headed. The first floor contains a round-headed window surrounded by a

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

with a broken segmental pediment containing carved figures. Above this bay rises a three-stage

campanile A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...

bearing an octagonal

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

with a

gilded Gilding is a decorative technique for applying a very thin coating of gold over solid surfaces such as metal (most common), wood, porcelain, or stone. A gilded object is also described as "gilt". Where metal is gilded, the metal below was tradi ...

dome. On the Dale Street façade is a

Venetian window A Venetian window (also known as a Serlian window) is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) did not invent it, the window features largely in the work of the Italian a ...

. The second floor contains a

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

s with cupolas and

finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a d ...

s. Between the turrets at attic level are three round-headed windows with rusticated Ionic

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s, an entablature, and an iron balcony. The interior contains the former General Office on the ground floor which, because of the steel frame, is free from any columns. Above this, the former Board Room has a

tunnel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

. Both rooms are decorated with

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

in 17th-century style. The building is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, an ...

as a designated Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. There is an earlier ''Royal Insurance Building'', dating from 1839, in nearby Queen Avenue, also Grade II* listed.

References

External links

Official websiteLiverpool Architecture
{{Liverpool B&S Grade II* listed buildings in Liverpool Edwardian architecture Structures formerly on the Heritage at Risk register Grade II* listed hotels

History

Architecture

See also

References

External links