Sunlight House is a 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 ...

in the

art deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style on

Quay Street Quay Street is a street in the city centre of Manchester, England. The street, designated the A34, continues Peter Street westwards towards the River Irwell and Salford. It is the northern boundary of Spinningfields, the city's business dist ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, England. Completed in 1932 for

Joseph Sunlight Joseph Sunlight ( – 15 April 1978), was a Belarusian/ English architect whose energy amassed him a great fortune in Manchester and left at least one fine building in Sunlight House. He was also a Liberal politician in his adopted country. Bi ...

, at 14 storeys it was the tallest building in Manchester, and the top floors of turrets and multiple dormer windows and mansard roofs create a distinctive skyline.

Description

Sunlight House is a 14 storey steel and

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wid ...

structure, clad in Portland stone. The building is almost square in plan, with three street frontages, and a large central light-well. There is a basement swimming pool below a leadlight domed skylight at first floor in the centre of the lightwell. Each of the three street facades are seven bays, with the two street corners expressed as three sided towers, which each rise to a four level octagonal

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 ...

, topped by a domed lantern and finial. Behind and between the turrets, the top four floors are expressed as a mansard roof with multiple setback square dormer windows, which together with the turrets create a distinctive skyline and a major feature in the city. Sunlight House facade

History

Sunlight House was completed in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, and was built by architect and developer

as the headquarters of his property business, with offices and shops to let. It was originally intended to be 40 storeys high, but this plan was scaled down due to opposition by the city council. On completion, at 14 storeys and , it was the city's tallest building until the 1960s (excluding towers and turrets of other buildings)., and claimed to be

Northern England Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...

's first skyscraper. A 40 storey extension proposed in 1948 was never built. The building was renovated in 1997 when it was found that bolts holding the cladding had rusted through. It now houses

office An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

s, shops and a health club. The health club uses the original basement swimming pool. In the early 21st century, the building has changed hands many times.

CIS Cis or cis- may refer to: Places * Cis, Trentino, in Italy * In Poland: ** Cis, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, south-central ** Cis, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, north Math, science and biology * cis (mathematics) (cis(''θ'')), a trigonome ...

bought Sunlight House from Gadaricus in 2002 for £27.5million and sold it in 2005 to Warner Estate Holdings for £40m. In 2014, it was bought by

Scottish Widows Scottish Widows is a life insurance and pensions company located in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is a subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group. Its product range includes life assurance and pensions. The company has been providing financial services to th ...

Investment Partners’ Property Trust for £34.5 million. In 2018,

Aberdeen Standard Investments Abrdn plc (stylised as ‘abrdn’, disemvoweling of "Aberdeen"), formerly Standard Life Aberdeen plc, is a United Kingdom-based global investment company headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a ...

commissioned a £4 million refurbishment of Sunlight House.

References

{{Manchester B&S Office buildings in Manchester Towers in Greater Manchester Grade II listed buildings in Manchester Grade II listed office buildings Art Deco architecture in England Buildings with mansard roofs

Description

History

See also

References