You might like the Carreras Building in Hampstead Rd.

I'd never heard of it until I was poking around the Mornington Crescent area (*) and suddenly came across this huge painted thing with Egyptian columns up the front.





(*) Having originally gone to the area to see Sir John Soane's tomb (from which Giles Gilbert Scott is supposed to have got his idea for the shape of the iconic red phone box), Hardy's tree (just Google it, fascinating story about Thomas Hardy and the railway to St Pancras) and the tomb of Mary Wollstonecroft ... all of which are in the pleasant churchyard of Old St Pancras Church, well worth an hour of one's time and only a short walk from St Pancras station, where the hotel was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the grandfather of the aforementioned Giles.

Just a shame that they've blocked the Liver Building from your viewpoint





The study of architecture is always fascinating and on the rare occasions that I get dragged by the females into Leeds then I stand around outside various shops waiting for them to do whatever the hell it is that women do in their womens shops, and I stare at the upper floors of whatever street I am stood in, up above the corporate branding vandalism of most of our high streets are the story of the high street and on main thoroughfares like Briggate in Leeds you get the full history of the city and an idea of how affluent some of the Victorian and Edwardian developers were - why else would you decorate the outside of your building with terracotta trimmings that serve no other purpose but to broadcast tot he world that YOU, the person who owns this retail outlet, are VERY, VERY wealthy and so deserving of the public confidence - something that you never ever see these days - when was the last time that you looked at a new B&Q warehouse and thought, "they must be worthy of our commercial trust, I mean, look at the money they've spent on that anodised orange cladding".



There's also a story behind the development of Leeds as a legal and financial centre in the 1970s and 80s over and above its neighbour in Bradford (which arguably has some much nicer remaining old buildings, yes really), from the awful 1960s functional but very ugly office buildings (fortunately not as all-pervasive as Bradfords centre was), through the 70s and 80s when someone at the council decided that plain old concrete was horrible and that brickwork should be seen once again in the city, preferably with contrasting brick features, and a proper pitched and tiled roof too - so much so did they buy into this concept that it became known as "The Leeds Design" and after a decade or so someone shouted "STOP" because it was becoming boring again





You can't win sometimes with architecture, the real answer is to have a good mix.

I rather like the compositions it creates with those diagonals, and then the Liver Building rising behind.

I used to be a London Bus driver, my route was the 24, i drove past it 8 times a day, 5 times a week for 2 years

I, like you, do that "upward looking" thing in Leeds and you see stuff like "Thornton and Co, India Rubber Manufacturers" above a shop front just a bit further up Briggate from M&S, very rewarding sometimes.

I heartily recommend buying/borrowing a copy of the latest version Of [iPevsner's Architectural Guide to Leeds[/i (as updated by Susan Wrathmell) ... it has short walks in the City Centre in it and I guarantee it will point out stuff that the lifelong Loiner never knew.





Aha, a Burmantofts-faced building? (e.g. Atlas House which houses the Allied Irish Bank in King Street, faced in "Marmo" ... or e.g. The interior of the cafe in the City Library, a great place to leaf through that Pevsner ... fantastic).

Amazing.

Is that the one from Victoria?



Did you like it?

The building, not the bus.

It goes through Victoria but not from it.



Yes, enough to actually look it up on the net

I worked in it for a short stint.

Well of course we can't let this comment pass without an honorary mention of Temple Mill in Leeds and a whole article dedicated to it [urlhttp://www.victoriansociety.org.uk/news/temple-mill-leeds/[/url, pure unadulterated Victorian entrepreneurship sticking two fingers up at his rivals in the city and building in a totally bizarre and unnecessary design , just because he had the money and time and will to do so - not forgetting that he then made a fortune out of the manufacturing process therein.



Temple Mill is in Holbeck, an area south of the city that housed huge swathes of the population in cramped back-to-back houses but also contained much of the heavy industry that the city grew to prominence in, the mills and the Hunslet Engine Works for instance so it was an intensively developed, probably filthy, industrialised area - why the hell would you build an Egyptian temple in the middle of it





Compare and contrast to any modern industrial estate you like and you'll see nothing of a modern equivalent either in design or simple "Balls to the rest of you" attitude amongst business leaders today.

It is remarkable looking at 19th century industrial architecture just how many flourishes were added – even to chimneys.

Well funny you should mention that





Just a short way along the river from the Temple Mill in Leeds [url=http://www.leodis.net/discovery/discovery.asp?page=200335_284221828&subsection=2003520_912014187&subsubsection=2003521_375591457&topic=200335_929714382we have a pair of rather splendid Italian Capaniles[/url although they were never bell towers but factory chimneys for "Joe Soaps", or Joseph Watson's soap works, they still stand although the main factory is long gone - but two factory chimneys built to resemble very intricate and highly decorative Italian bell towers which would hardly have been visible in the industrial landscape of the time anyway, indeed its only in recent decades that they have become as prominent as they are now.

For those of you interested in futuristic city projects, or just want to get to see the world from angles you don't normally see then this site www.skyscrapercity.com/index.php Is just about the most comprehensive resource on the planet. The photography from some people is simply stunning a sample in this thread of the standard on show www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1636110

For those of you interested in futuristic city projects, or just want to get to see the world from angles you don't normally see then this site www.skyscrapercity.com/index.php Is just about the most comprehensive resource on the planet. The photography from some people is simply stunning a sample in this thread of the standard on show www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1636110