Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool1 by

Richard Hill

The term ‘adaptive re-use’ is now used routinely in discussions of the conservation of historic buildings.2 This article applies the term to case studies of individual buildings in the City of . It then applies it to larger historic landscapes, and to landscapes of housing in the city. The article concludes by discussing some of the social and economic problems that the city currently faces, in the context of ideas of conservation and re-use.

FROM THE CITY CENTRE PLAN TO ALBERT DOCK The post-war reconstruction of , part of which had been badly bombed, lagged behind that of other major cities, a delay which in 1962 prompted the Corporation to appoint Graeme Shankland as Planning Consultant. His final report was published in 1965. It incorporated a number of pre-existing proposals, notably the Ravenseft scheme for the demolition and redevelopment of St John’s Market and the surrounding area, which opened in 1969.3 The Plan included a scheme for an Inner Motorway, a modified version of the Council’s previous proposals for an inner ring road, proposals which would have caused considerable harm to the coherence of the city centre. Shankland’s scheme would have caused its own kinds of harm particularly in separating ‘Georgian Liverpool’ from the city centre but in the event only a fragment was built and the Inner Motorway idea eventually was abandoned. Proposals were included in the Plan for a new civic centre, adding a third side to the monumental complex of civic buildings already existing on . A design was developed in outline by Colin St John Wilson but nothing came of it.4 Also included was a scheme for a new park and multi-storey housing on the vacant Strand/Paradise Street site. Some small interventions were made but it took nearly fifty years for this crucial site to be developed, as part of the regeneration project, which is discussed in more detail below. Thus ‘The Shankland Plan’, which subsequently became a key example of 1960s planning proposals, actually had little effect on the city.5 Shankland’s lasting contribution may have been in setting the terms for the conservation of historic buildings and townscape, including proposals for Conservation Areas, some years in advance of the Civic Amenities Act.6 He appointed the architect and historian Quentin Hughes as his advisor on historic buildings and in 1965 Hughes was the author of the city’s first conservation strategy.7 In the previous year he had published

Richard Hill is an architect and writer. He teaches a course on the adaptive re-use of buildings for the New York University MA programme in . He spends part of each year on the small Hebridean island of Colonsay and is writing a history of the transformation of the island’s buildings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 8 Transactions of the Ancient Society

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Drawing from a student proposal for the The Albert Dock arcade, September 2019 regeneration of Albert Dock Photograph, author Architects’ Journal (12 July 1967)

Fig. 3 The 1904 and 1910 schemes for Liverpool Anglican Cathedral Redrawn by the author Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 9

Seaport, with its superb photographs by David Wrightson and Graham Smith. It captured the atmosphere and character of Liverpool’s mostly nineteenth century inner areas, but the title also implied two larger claims: first that the city’s identity was rooted in its being a port, and secondly that perhaps Liverpool was the seaport, the canonic one. Shankland contributed an introduction to Seaport which included the following: It will be the pressure of public opinion not just in Liverpool, but in the world, which will secure the future of Liverpool’s heritage shown here. Foreign visitors do not yet see Liverpool as one of Britain’s main tourist attractions; the next ten years can change this.8 The timing was optimistic and heritage tourism took many more years to develop. In the meantime there were some important losses, for example the Sailors’ Home, Canning Place, in 1974, but the weakness of Liverpool’s economy and the lack of pressure for development was a kind of good fortune for the survival of historic buildings in the city centre.

ARCHITECTURAL GOOD FORTUNE The question of the re-use of historic buildings, rather than just their preservation, came into sharp focus at Albert Dock, the finest of the massive dock and warehouse installations designed in the 1840s by Jesse Hartley, the Dock Engineer. It was obsolete for shipping by the 1920s and by the 1960s only in marginal use for storage.9 It was listed Grade II* in 1952 (and upgraded to Grade I in 1985) and the prospect of its demolition and replacement provoked numerous adaptive re-use proposals.10 Demolition was averted but the complex lay empty until it became the centrepiece of the regeneration of the South Docks by the Development Corporation in 1984. The project followed the example of regeneration in American port cities in combining shopping, restaurants, apartments, and offices, with cultural anchors in the form of a new maritime museum and the first of the Tate Gallery’s satellites.11 The success of Albert Dock is so firmly embedded in Liverpool’s recent history that the architectural good fortune that the building offered can easily be overlooked.12 It forms an enclosed enclave, with openings to views of the Anglican cathedral and the at exactly the right points; the double height ground floor allows for generous entrances to the museums and Tate Gallery; the upper floors, with their brick jack-arch structures and widely spaced columns can accommodate galleries, hotel rooms, apartments and offices with equal ease. But the clincher is the wide colonnade that allows groups of visitors to amble around the dock, as if they were under the grand arcades in the centre of Turin. The potential of this architectural feature had become evident many years before the project materialised. For example a drawing from an influential student project (Fig. 1), drawn more than fifty years ago and eighteen years before the project came to fruition, accurately predicted what can be seen today (Fig. 2). Consider other instances of architectural good fortune. Giles Gilbert Scott won the 1901 competition for the Anglican cathedral with a plan of a conventional Gothic kind: a long nave with aisles, transepts with towers, and a long choir. Construction began on that basis in 1904, starting from the liturgical east end, but in 1910 Scott proposed to replace the double towers with a single central one between the choir and the nave.13 This became a ‘Central Space’, with a giant arched entrance on to the street. The two schemes 10 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society are shown here (Fig. 3). Scott may have been considering this astonishing modification for a while, and it helped that he was now in sole charge of the design: G.F.Bodley, with whom Scott had been required to collaborate on account of his age and inexperience, had died in 1907. The change dealt with two problems. One was the difficulty of the narrow site, squeezed between St James Road and the chasm of St James’s Cemetery, which made for a narrow plan with the chancel at a vast distance from the entrance. Having the main entrance in the centre alleviated the problem, introducing a second axis of symmetry and a tripartite arrangement with the nave to the left and the choir to the right (Fig. 4). The other problem was to accommodate ‘great popular services’, as the Cathedral had envisaged from the start and the Central Space and transept crossings achieved this in spectacular fashion. The question then arose of how the ‘nave’, at an enormous distance from the altar, could be used and designed in detail. Scott’s eventual solution was to give it a separate identity with a floor level lower than the rest of the cathedral and an arch between it and the Central Space, framing the views in each direction. The resulting sequence is more like a Roman Baths than a Gothic cathedral: a number of distinct spaces are joined on plan Fig. 4 Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, looking across St James’s and linked spatially within a single Cemetery. The Chancel is to the left giant structural order. Wikimedia Commons The good fortune is that Scott’s re-design allows for an astonishingly wide range of uses. It provides a magnificent setting for services, as the client wished. The Central Space is highly atmospheric but it does not feel conventionally ecclesiastical, so great civic events are at home there as well. But that is just the beginning: the Central Space can accommodate gala dinners for up to 1,000 people, standing receptions for 3,000 and seated Fig. 5 concerts for 2,000, absorbing A performance of The Crimson Grail in the Central all the technical paraphernalia Space of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral (2012). 100 of performance, lighting and electric guitars are disposed around an audience of 1,000 Photograph courtesy of Getintothis Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 11 amplification without difficulty. For example Rhys Chatham’s The Crimson Grail, a piece for 100 electric guitars was performed in the Central Space in 2012 (Fig. 5).14 The nave (now called The Well) can host gala dinners for 300, and theatre-style concerts and lectures for 450; and the Lady Chapel can seat 200 for lectures and performances.15 Of course all cathedrals strive to make income from lettings – for example the nave of Maufe’s Guildford Cathedral can be hired for a 500 cover banquet – but the scale and flexibility of Liverpool’s lettable space is good fortune indeed. A comparison with the design of the Roman Catholic Cathedral is instructive. Part of the crypt of Lutyens’ massive scheme was built in the 1930s, but by the 1950s it was obvious that the scheme would never be completed (fortunately it can be seen in the gigantic model now in the ).16 The 1959 competition for a replacement design was based on making a level platform on which a new building would sit, functionally and stylistically separate from the crypt below. The brief stated that ‘The High Altar is the central feature of every Catholic church. It must be the focus of the new building. The trend of the liturgy is to associate the congregation ever more closely with the celebrant of the Mass…’.17 Frederick Gibberd’s winning scheme interpreted this general requirement (as did other competitors) with an entirely centralised design (Fig. 6). From a liturgical point of view the panoptic design is far in advance of the arrangement of the Anglican cathedral and prefigured the discussion of liturgical arrangements that took place at the Second Vatican Council in 1963, but obviously the fixity of the central

Fig. 6 The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Cathedral 12 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society

dais and the rings of pews make it quite unusable for banquets and stand-up receptions and indeed productions of The Crimson Grail.18 Scott’s Central Space, on the other hand is gloriously empty for much of the time, and is activated by whatever arrangement of seating, tables and equipment is needed for a particular event. However Lutyens has come to the rescue of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, with the aid of the Heritage Lottery Fund, for his sombre Crypt has recently been refurbished to allow it to be used for events. The Crypt Hall can now accommodate dinners for 300 (and for example the Liverpool Beer Festival) and the Concert Room can host audiences of 250 (Fig. 7).19 Liverpool has been hit hard by public expenditure cuts.20 However in one case at least this has brought a kind of good fortune for a historic building. St George’s Hall (Fig. 8) was designed in 1839 by H.L.Elmes and completed after his death Fig. 7 by C.R.Cockerell in 1856.21 It A banquet set out in the refurbished Lutyens Crypt at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, comprised a Great Hall for public Liverpool events, two courtrooms and a Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Cathedral circular Recital Room, arranged in a line with a circulation system of startling simplicity. This is Britain’s greatest neo-classical building, as the Anglican cathedral is its greatest expression of the final stage of the Gothic Revival. In 1984 the courts moved out and although lettings of the Great Hall and the Concert Room continued, the future of the building was precarious. An ambitious Heritage Lottery Fund project (completed 2007) secured the historic fabric of the building and restored important interiors, including the recital room. It also created a heritage centre with interpreted routes focusing on the courts and cells, adding heritage tourism to the use of the building. Then in 2011 in response to the desire to cut accommodation costs the City Council moved the Registrars of births, marriages and deaths to the building. Areas of the basement (sublimely gloomy, and of great historical importance as the location of an early air-conditioning system) were also opened up for events and exhibitions. Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 13

Fig. 8 St George’s Hall, Liverpool, viewed from Lime Street Station Photograph, John Bold

Fig. 9 Newly-weds in the Recital Room, St George’s Hall, Liverpool Photograph courtesy of Liverpool City Council and Tux and Tales 14 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society

Income from the Hall now returns £1m p.a. to the City Council. It hosts 1,000 weddings every year (Fig. 9) and about half of them opt for the add-on champagne reception. There have been 150 performances over ten years by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in addition to its concerts at the Philharmonic Hall; there are chamber music series in the Recital Room and comedy, singalongs, choirs, tribute bands, immersive theatre events, conferences and lectures. The Great Hall hosts organ recitals, beer, gin and rum festivals, antiques fairs, wedding fairs, health and wellbeing events, conferences and lectures, banquets, award ceremonies. It is used as a film location (for example Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). The Hall becomes a base for numerous arts and community events: the annual LightNight arts festival, the Liverpool Biennial, the annual DaDaFest of art by and for disabled and deaf people, the annual Pride festival. The extraordinary Minton tiled floor is revealed for a month of each year, to be seen but not walked on, bringing in £80,000 of ticket income. This permanent festival of re-use does have its limits. Until recently the Coroner’s court used the redundant civil court. The noises of setting up and the occasional booming of the organ in the adjacent Great Hall were not acceptable in a court that required respectful silence, and it has now moved elsewhere. Nevertheless the programming of the Hall’s space-time jigsaw of events is a continuing masterclass in imaginative re-use and success will breed more success, with plans for ‘fewer, bigger, better’ events and an up-dating of the heritage experience.22

VARIETIES OF ADAPTIVE RE-USE Adaptive re-use is generally discussed by reference to example, rather than theory, and typically it is of an existing building with a new addition or modification in contrasting construction and style, the old and new clearly juxtaposed. A recent good example in Liverpool would be the Unity Theatre in Hope Place, half way between the two cathedrals. It is the descendant of the 1930s Merseyside Left Theatre and took over the Hope Place Synagogue (built in 1857), adding an extension in 1998 (Fig. 10). The new structure is steel and glass (designed by K2 Architects), contrasting with the decorated brickwork of the original building. Three recent projects around Hope Street are variants around this central case. The first is the new Everyman Theatre (opened 2014, designed by Haworth Tompkins) at the north end of Hope Street, very near the Roman Catholic Cathedral. It is a replacement for the theatre that in 1964 was converted from a non-conformist chapel of 1837, and it reuses, for sustainability and symbolic reasons, the bricks of the original structure (Fig. 11). This is the Eric Morecambe definition of adaptive re-use: the previous physical components are all there, but just in a different order. The shape of the auditorium and stage, exceptionally wide for the size of the building, had become embedded in the theatre’s performance style over the years and was replicated in the new building. The position of the beloved basement bistro was retained but it was made much more glamorous; even the distinctive 1970s graphics formed the basis of a new sign and a new corporate typeface. The desire to protect the character of the old Everyman was widely held, as the architect recalled in an interview: ‘One taxi driver actually stopped the cab and said: “You fuck that up, you’re fucking fucked.” That was pretty much the text for the project.’23 Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 15

Secondly there is the splendid complex at the opposite end of Hope Street comprising the former Liverpool Institute boys’ school – originally built as The Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution in 1835 – and the adjacent College of Art. The first phase of the College was built in 1883, with a second added in 1910 by Willink and Thicknesse, in fine Liverpool neo-classical style.24 The contiguous phases climb up Mount Street and then spread along Hope Street (Fig. 12): a very Liverpool kind of architectural event, like Mount Pleasant, or at a grander scale, William Brown Street. The Liverpool Institute closed in 1985 and a decade later the building was adapted, with careful additions, for the new Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. Some years later the College of Art also moved to a new building, and a second phase of conversion was opened in 2016, designed by Brock Carmichael, the architects of the first phase. There are adaptations to the circulation system with an atrium holding the various phases together but the historic details are treated with loving care: for example each of the 1883 and 1910 door architraves is conserved appropriately. The second phase uses exactly the same new interior detailing as the first, down to the type and colour of the floor finishes, which run seamlessly through from one building to the next. This is very unusual and very appealing and it raises questions about adaptive re-use. Obviously the new use of the building, as a modern theatre and performance school, is different from its original use as an art school but it is still a cultural and educational use and there was much relief when LIPA took over the building and the prospect of a typical adaptive re-use project as apartments or a hotel was averted.25 The adaptations are subtle, and hard to detect; the new use is different from the original one, but congruent in a broader civic spectrum. Thirdly, consider the former Royal School for the Blind on Hope Street and Hardman Street, built in 1851 with a classical street front and array of workhouse wings behind, then extended in 1932 by Spencely and Minoprio.26 From 1958 to 1982 it was the headquarters of Merseyside Police, and from 1982 to 2004 it accommodated the Merseyside Trade Union, Community and Unemployed Resource Centre. It is now a complex of restaurants, hotel rooms and workspaces. As with LIPA the façades remain unchanged and the internal structural adaptations are limited, but a block of new hotel rooms (designed by L7 Architects) hovers above the 1932 building (Fig. 13). Other theatrical and performance uses now cluster along Hope Street. The Liverpool Media Academy is based in a converted 1960s office block; the Merseyside Dance Initiative is in a 19th-century office nearby, and the Merseyside Academy of Drama shares the very fine spaces of the Liverpool Masonic Hall (built 1857) with the Freemasons. Clustering of uses is characteristic of cities, but Hope Street is evidently also a cluster of varieties of re-use: attractive, low-key, opportunistic. A much grander example of adaptive re-use can be seen at Stadium, where a strategy of piece-by-piece adaptation has unfolded in recent decades. Liverpool Football Club played its first match at Anfield in 1892 (the site had previously been occupied by Everton FC). In 1906 the main stand and the Kop were designed by Archibald Leitch, the former in the Hennebique reinforced concrete system, the latter a massive inclined plane of earth from a nearby tramline excavation.27 There have been major changes to the stands in every decade from the 1960s on, and continuous building work in the last few years. The aim has been to improve safety, comfort and facilities for spectators and sponsors and to provide better facilities for players and press, and the execution has 16 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society

Fig. 10 Unity Theatre, Hope Place, Liverpool showing adaptations to 1857 Synagogue Photograph courtesy of K2 Architects

Fig. 11 Interior of the new Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, showing re-used bricks and the new auditorium in similar configuration to the old building Photograph courtesy of Haworth Tompkins Architects and Philip Vile, photographer Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 17

Fig. 12 Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, formerly the Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution, 1835 (extreme right), Art School (centre 1883, left 1910) Photograph, author

Fig. 13 Former Royal School for the Blind, Hope Street, Liverpool, by Spencely and Minoprio, 1931. Three floors of hotel rooms, designed by L7 Architects, have recently been added above the parapet Photograph, author 18 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society been a logistical triumph, carrying out major engineering work in the summer recesses. The use category of the stadium has remained the same but the practicalities of use have been entirely transformed. The capacity is now 54,000 which might be increased to 61,000 in a forthcoming phase, but this is still less than the maximum capacity of 61,905 that was achieved in 1952. The step by step approach suits cash flow, and has continued through three changes of ownership. But, as with the Everyman, there is also a background commitment to a place, and to a particular spatial configuration that has worked in the past, accumulating its own history and traditions. Liverpool FC has built further on them, literally so in the case of the two-tier stands which intensify the famous Anfield atmosphere. A comparison with Everton Football Club widens the scope of discussions about adaptive re-use. Everton has less emotional and symbolic investment in than Liverpool has in Anfield, and is proposing a new stadium on the site of Bramley- Moore Dock in the northern part of the World Heritage Site.28 The dock is currently unused, but it is full of water and its reclamation may challenge the World Heritage Site designation, which depends among other things on the coherence of the system of linked, enclosed docks. The architect Dan Meis has said ‘I am striving for a design that feels like it grew from the docks and can simultaneously look like it is from the future and yet has always been there.’ The current proposal (Fig. 14), shows a massive brick plinth in the manner of nearby buildings such as the gigantic Tobacco Warehouse of 1901, with a glass and metal structure above it. It is an entirely new building, but the combination of plinth and superstructure – of the always-been-there and the future – is in the style of an adaptive re-use project, and no doubt intended to deflect possible objections from UNESCO on the project’s effect on the World Heritage Site. The question of whether Everton would be able to raise the £500m or so needed to build a new stadium hangs over the entire proposal. But even if the project does not go ahead a Planning Permission which allowed the filling-in of the dock would be a

Fig. 14 Proposed new stadium for Everton Football Club at Bramley-Moore Dock, Liverpool Photograph courtesy of Everton F.C. Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 19 considerable piece of good fortune for the landowner (Peel Land and Property Group) who may wish to develop the site for other purposes. The underlying problem is that the vast extent of the north docks, with their eerie unoccupied basins, excites only limited public affection: yes, they signify Liverpool’s mercantile past, but they have little emotional appeal as places. The current public debate on the future of the World Heritage Site poses the question of whether all the docks need to be retained as enclosed water: perhaps just a few areas would be enough to sustain public memory and historical understanding? This is an adaptive re-use problem at the scale of the city. After Shankland it was necessary to devise strategies for the re-use of individual buildings. Now the problem is to devise an adaptation and re-use strategy for the very large area of the docks that fall into the World Heritage Site.29

HOUSING The regeneration of Albert Dock was followed by numerous adaptations of 19th- century dock and commercial buildings for apartments, for instance at Waterloo Dock, the Building, Tower Buildings and in many smaller developments by Urban Splash and others.30 The Tobacco Warehouse at Stanley Dock, where work is currently underway, will be the largest and most dramatic of these waterfront conversions, with 538 apartments (Fig. 15).31 The conversion of dockside warehouses and commercial buildings into apartments, has brought large numbers of ‘creatives’, retirees and second homers into the city centre, contributing to the reversal in a seventy-year pattern of population decline.32 It is undoubtedly a process of adaptive re-use and the new population has contributed to a change in the social geography of the city as a whole. The term ‘non- displacement gentrification’ seems appropriate: very few working class households were displaced, since the buildings in question were previously warehousing or offices. The scale of gentrification in Liverpool should not be exaggerated: it affects a very small part of an inner urban area typified by high levels of multiple deprivation.33 Nevertheless it is an entirely appropriate term for recent changes in ‘Georgian Liverpool’, where former private sector and housing association flats and student rooms in handsome early nineteenth-century houses are giving way to conversions back to single family use (Fig. 16). Strictly speaking these buildings are returning to the prosperous middle-class for whom they were built in the 19th century, but of course their social character had been transformed in the 20th century.34 There is very little external adaptation but the interiors of houses and their social ‘use’ are radically changed, so adaptive re-use seems an appropriate term as well. In recent years discussions of social housing in Liverpool have been dominated by the effects of the Housing Market Renewal (HMR) Programme, a national policy that ran from 2002 to 2011, aiming to bring clearance and rehabilitation policies together in targetted areas where the housing market was weak, and the possibility existed of ‘abandonment’ on a significant scale.35 The end result was that roughly 20% of the houses in the designated areas in the City of Liverpool and nearby boroughs were refurbished to some degree and about 4% were demolished. Refurbishment had little effect on the housing landscape – as was the intention – but the effect of the demolitions has been dramatic. The largest areas of clearance were north of the city centre, near Anfield 20 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society

Fig. 15 Stanley Dock, Liverpool. The Tobacco Warehouse, currently being converted to apartments, is to the left. On the right hand side of the dock is the Titanic Hotel, recently converted from an 1840s dock building. On the extreme right is the post-war rebuilding of a bombed warehouse, now converted to a banqueting suite. The proposed new Everton Stadium will be beyond the bridge and tower visible at the end of the dock Photograph courtesy of Stanley Dock

Fig. 16 Gentrification in progress: conversion of former student hostel in Percy Street, Liverpool, back to houses, September 2019 Photograph, author Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 21

Stadium.36 The rebuilding and rehabilitation schemes lagged years behind the HMR demolition programme, but the resulting landscape is now emerging, for example at ‘Four Oaks’, where 600 new houses are being developed by Keepmoat housing. It is an array of two and three storey house types, conjoined or detached, a random scatter of buildings with no attempt to create coherent groupings.37 Each house is prefaced by bleak parking bays and has a small back garden with a high fence. The ‘public realm’ is astonishingly brutal: wide tarmac footpaths and roads, no shared landscaping, no trees (Fig. 17). This new landscape contrasts with the groups of two storey houses, mostly semi- detached or in short terraces with some bungalows that were built in the inner city in the 1980s (Figs 18 and 19). Some of these schemes face on to streets, some are semi-private closes and courtyards. The difference is a sign of one of the most remarkable episodes in recent British housing history: the contention, ideological, social and financial, between the projects of the new-build co-operative housing movement (about 40 new-build housing co-operatives were founded in the city between 1973 and 1992), which tended to be designed as enclaves, and the Corporation’s ambitious new build policy during the ‘Militant’ administration 1983-87, which adhered more strictly to the existing street pattern. 38 The Corporation schemes created a public realm in which modest streets gave on to front gardens, with some gradation between the public and private worlds. The co- operative layouts tended to be more inward-looking, partly because of the co-operators’ desire for security from the streets around. By comparison with these now-attractive landscapes something has gone horribly wrong at Four Oaks. It may simply be a question of money: after all similar environments occur in other towns at the lower end of the price range for new houses. But there is a cultural dimension. The co-operative schemes hinted that a small scale neighbourliness was possible, and the ‘Militant’ housing emphasised the continuity of the old street pattern, the civic scale. At Four Oaks there is neither the civic order, nor any sense of neighbourliness, and therefore no sense that new housing can draw on an adaptation of local tradition. Nor, of course, is there any sense of a new way of life, of a new kind of landscape. The post-HMR landscape has other significant features. The city is running a ‘Homes for a Pound’ homesteading scheme for individual empty houses left over from the clearance programme. About 100 houses are currently in the pipeline, with 2,500 applicants for further stages.39 Community Land Trusts have been established in two areas, drawing on some of the outlook and experience of the earlier housing co-operatives. , and Homebaked (‘brick by brick and loaf by loaf we build ourselves’) have brought housing activists together with artists, in the former case via links with Assemble, a collective of architects and designers and in the latter via a commission at the 2012 Biennial.40 Near to Granby Four Streets rehabilitation is taking place for private renting in the ‘Welsh Streets’.41 Displacement of the original working-class population occurred some years ago, before and during the HMR programme and received a great deal of press and campaigning attention.42 Like the incomers to Georgian Liverpool, the new private tenants in the Welsh Streets are making a lifestyle choice since for the amount they pay they could choose to live elsewhere in the city-region, in a charming Victorian suburb, a recently-built suburban estate, or, at the cost of a longer commute, in a delightful rural area of Cheshire or Lancashire. 22 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society

Fig. 17 Four Oaks Estate, Anfield, Liverpool, replacing areas of terraced housing demolished in the Housing Renewal Programme Photograph, author

Fig. 18 Council housing built during the ‘Militant’ administration (1983-87), near Park Lane, Liverpool Photograph, author

Fig. 19 1980s co-operative housing, near Park Lane, Liverpool Photograph, author Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 23

Fig. 20 The Bank of , Liverpool (architect C.R.Cockerell, 1848) Photograph, John Bold

Fig. 21 Fig. 22 , Liverpool (architect Peter White Star Building, Liverpool (architect Ellis, 1864) Richard Norman Shaw, 1898) Illustration from Quentin Hughes, Seaport (1964) Photograph, John Bold 24 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society

Fig. 23 , Liverpool (architect Herbert Rowse, 1932) showing proposed installation of security point at the main entrance, making the arcade inaccessible to the public Photograph courtesy of FCH Architects

THE COMMERCIAL CORE Liverpool currently has the lowest city centre office rents of the leading nine British cities: the headline rent in Liverpool in the first quarter of 2019 was £21.50/sq ft, compared with £35 in Manchester.43 There is currently very little Grade A office space available in Liverpool, a consequence of a low level of new building which is in turn a consequence of low demand. Office buildings are crucial to Liverpool’s architectural heritage: C.R.Cockerell at the Bank of England (completed 1848), Peter Ellis at Oriel Chambers (1864), Richard Norman Shaw at the White Star building (1898), the giant 20th-century palazzi at the Pier Head (1907-16), India Buildings (1932), the Martins Bank headquarters (1932), and a matrix of handsome 19th- and early 20th-century blocks (Figs 20-22).44 Today a visitor can walk round the commercial core, which is largely untouched by late 20th-century redevelopment, and sense the grandeur of a commercial city. In the early evening the streets are busy and the illusion might be entertained that crowds of office workers are making their way home to the suburbs, just as clerks, typists and secretaries did a century ago, and that little has changed. It would of course be only an illusion. The ground floors of commercial buildings are adapted for cafes, bars and some shops, but the upper floors are often empty. A number of important buildings have been converted to hotels, in the case of the Royal Insurance offices with public funding to kickstart the development process.45 The splendid interior of the White Star office building is now accessible as a hotel and is a favourite wedding venue, and work is underway by Radisson Red to re-convert Alfred Waterhouse’s hotel at Lime Street station after its 1980s adaptation to student residences. Numerous banking halls have been converted to bars and restaurants, the most common form of adaptive re-use in town and city centres everywhere. But Cockerell’s Bank of England building and the Martin’s Bank headquarters, which is the swansong of the city’s commercial and financial eminence and of its distinctive monumental-classical tradition, have lain empty for years. India Buildings has been saved from redundancy by a conversion for HMRC, but at the cost of making inaccessible to Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 25

Fig. 24 Aerial view of central Liverpool. Liverpool One is in the centre of the picture. Albert Dock is on the extreme left, on the riverfront. The ‘Three Graces’ (The Port of Liverpool, Cunard and Liver Buildings) are in the centre, also on the riverfront, and the grid of commercial streets lies behind them Photograph courtesy of Liverpool One

Fig. 25 Liverpool One: the reconstructed South John Street Photograph courtesy of Liverpool One 26 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society the public the wonderful arcade in which office workers once imagined that they were in New York or Chicago (Fig. 23). The City Council has rescued the (1916) from partial emptiness, having disposed of its sombre Municipal Buildings (1868) which in turn now have planning permission for hotel use. Overall the commercial property market is in uneasy stasis: physical adaptation of the historic commercial core to new kinds of office use is extremely limited in scope. Graeme Shankland predicted, correctly, that Liverpool would become a tourist city and the adaptation of commercial buildings to hotels is an obvious aspect of the tourist economy. The city is now the fifth most visited UK city by foreign residents after London, Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham. But this overlaps with a more complex and more interesting situation in which the city centre has been transformed as a destination for residents of the city and the surrounding region. The most obvious point is the regeneration of the retail core. Liverpool One, a large multi-use regeneration scheme by Grosvenor Properties completed in 2008, is the focus of this story but not the whole of it: other shopping areas in the city centre are also prospering, as retail in London and other cities is declining.46 The happy situation with retail is the inverse of the problematic state of the office market. An important feature of Liverpool One is that it maintains and extends the city’s inherited street pattern, so that it is hard to see the join between the old and the new (Figs 24 and 25). The pedestrian street pattern now extends across to Albert Dock, linking the retail and commercial core to the riverside world of museums, galleries, shops, restaurants, bars, the conference arena and the exhibition centre. New uses can be listed – music and conferences at the Arena, food and drink around the dock itself, aesthetic and intellectual pleasures at and the museums – but it is hard to define the ‘use’ of the whole area. The adjacent Pier Head has become a ‘place of memory’,47 with a recent accumulation of small memorials (Fig. 26), some deeply moving, such as the plaque recording the expulsion of Chinese seafarers from the city after the second world war.48 The area is without doubt a place for flâneurs and flâneuses, for young lovers who fix padlocks to the chain railings on the river front and throw away the key (Fig. 27), for families meeting up at half term, and for retired people just taking the air and having a cup of tea. We know from visitor surveys that day-visitors are predominantly from the city region or the north-west of England. Visits to the city centre by inhabitants of the city itself, who must make up a good proportion of the total, are not even counted in the statistics.49

CONCLUSION Re-use, with minimal adaptation, can simply be a matter of good fortune, architectural or otherwise, as Albert Dock, St George’s Hall and the Anglican Cathedral show. Other examples in Hope Street show how modest adaptation can accommodate radical changes in use, and the modernisation of Anfield Stadium shows that adaptation to changing use can be effected step-by-step. The example of the Everyman shows the opposite, but related point that a total reconstruction of a building can in some ways retain its accumulated uses and character. ‘Housing landscapes’ also offer varying examples: gentrification maintains the outside appearance of old streets but entirely transforms their social ‘use’, while the most recent new building seems incapable of sustaining civic or community Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 27

Fig. 26 Fig.27 ‘Love-locks’ on the railings between Albert Memorial to Captain Johnnie Walker, Dock and the Pier Head hero of the Battle of the Atlantic (by Photograph, author Tom Murphy, 1998) one of a number of recent memorials to be found at the Pier Head Photograph, author values or a vision of a new kind of city. However the ‘walking-city’, the complex of streets in the old commercial and retail core, the Pier Head, Albert Dock, the routes up to Hope Street and the cathedrals and then circling back down to the river via St George’s Hall, Victoria Street and , retains its charm: little adapted but much re-used. Turning to the possible architectural future of the city, the prospect is currently bleak, on the evidence of new housing developments, the lack of political and corporate support for a regeneration strategy that will make sense of the World Heritage Site, the weakness of the commercial sector in the city centre, and the absence of an urban design strategy for the magnificent river front (Fig. 28). The process of adaptation of city centre warehouses and commercial buildings to apartments seems to have paused, or perhaps halted altogether. Recent developments and those in the pipeline in the city centre are either of student rooms or new blocks of small apartments.50 Design standards are low: buildings are pushed to the limits of their permitted envelopes, there is little consideration for the streetscape, and elevations are as cheap as possible.51 There is particular concern in the Baltic Triangle, an area with a cluster of digital, media and creative firms, where the possibility of a richer mix of uses may get crowded out and the virtues of the simple grid of streets may be lost.52 Can adaptive re-use apply at the scale of the whole city? Can Liverpool adapt itself, in the sense of re-imagining itself, and could new uses emerge? It is still the fourth largest British port: the container terminal is to the north of the city and there are other port functions elsewhere in the Mersey estuary.53 Although the city still has a higher proportion of jobs in transport and storage than other British ‘core cities’54 (4.9% compared with 4%) this labour force is dwarfed by the health/education/public administration sector (35.3% of the total) and the retail/accommodation/food/arts/entertainment (23.8% of the total) sector.55 Liverpool is no longer a ‘port-city’ – no longer ‘Seaport’ – since the port 28 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society has ceased to be the base of the city’s economy, patterns of social life are not determined by port activities, and those activities do not sustain city elites.56 Its historical existence as a port-city lives in the memory of older people, but it is only a background feature of the new economic base of the city, which lies in services, education, retail, tourism and hospitality. Perhaps this can be sustained indefinitely but low rates of company formation, and of graduate retention, are causing concern about the city’s economic future, and the possibility of new economic uses. The city has two faces: ‘multiple deprivation’ and ‘multiple celebration’. The two co-exist, but uneasily and as yet there is no single self- image which replaces the power of the former ‘port-city’. 57 The term adaptive re-use can therefore be used beyond the aesthetic context where it is most often employed, bringing a diverse collection of examples into unexpected connection. But the two parts of the phrase sit uneasily together: adaptation involves the physical rearrangement of a building and it can be measured and usually seen but ‘use’ defies a single definition, and is open to myriad interpretations.58

Fig. 28 The classic view of the Liverpool waterfront, c.2000, before the construction of the Museum of Liverpool: the (1908-11), the Cunard Building (1914-16), the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, now Port of Liverpool Building (1903-07) Wikimedia Commons

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to students on the New York University in London programme on Historical and Sustainable Architecture with whom I have visited Liverpool over a number of years, and who have helped me to see things that otherwise I would have ignored. I also wish to thank the following, who have generously and repeatedly shared their knowledge of the city: Bryan Biggs, Xanthe Brooke, John Hinchliffe, Sophy Krajewska, Gerry Proctor, Samantha Rhodes and Alan Smith. Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 29

NOTES 1 The context of the phrase is: ‘A third type of building which … may qualify for listing on aesthetic grounds is the outstanding composition of fragmentary beauties welded together by time and good fortune …’ in Ministry of Town and Country Planning, Instructions to Investigators for the listing of buildings of special architectural or historic interest (March 1946), 9. It was probably written by John Summerson. My use of the phrase is also a nod to Terence Davies’s compilation of documentary footage (2008) which is essential viewing for an understanding of Liverpool’s recent history. 2 M.Gorgolewski, Resource Salvation: The Architecture of Reuse (Oxford, 2018). G.Booker and S.Stone, Rereadings 2: Interior Architecture and the Design Principles of Remodelling Existing Buildings (London, 2018). M.Baum and K.Christiaanse, City as Loft: Adaptive Reuse as a Resource for Sustainable Urban Development (Zurich, 2012). F.Astorg Bollack Old Buildings New Forms: New Directions in Architectural Transformations (New York, 2013). I.Boyd and R.Hunt, New Designs for Old Buildings (London, 2017). 3 Liverpool City Council, Liverpool City Centre Plan (Liverpool, 1965). O.Saumarez Smith, ‘Graeme Shankland: A sixties architect-planner and the political culture of the British Left’, Architectural History, 57 (2014), 393-422. N.Tiratsoo, ‘The Reconstruction of Blitzed British Cities 1945-55: Myths and Reality’, Contemporary British History, 14/1 (2000). G.Shankland, ‘Inner Urban Motorway System for Liverpool’, Ekistics, 17/99 (February 1964), 107-114. 4 R.Stonehouse, Colin St John Wilson: Buildings and Projects (London, 2007), 414-15. 5 L.Esher, A Broken Wave: the rebuilding of England 1940-1980 (London, 1981), chapter 6. 6 Liverpool City Council, Liverpool City Centre Plan, 95-97. 7 Quentin Hughes obituary, Architects’ Journal, 219/20 (20 May 2004), 12. 8 Q.Hughes, Seaport: Architecture and Townscape in Liverpool (London, 1964), viii. 9 A.Ritchie-Noakes, Liverpool’s Historic Waterfront (London, 1984). 10 ‘Albert Dock Liverpool: Students Try Rehabilitation’, Architects’ Journal (12 July 1967), 125-31. See also the video in Liverpool Museum’s Mapping Memory series: http://www.liverpoolmuseums. org.uk/maritime/research/mappingmemory/themes/memories/memory-1.html. (Accessed 25.7.2019). 11 M.Heseltine, Life in the Jungle: My Autobiography, (London 2000), 209-36. 12 M.Parkinson and A.Lord, Albert Dock: What Part in Liverpool’s Continuing Renaissance?, University of Liverpool, Heseltine Institute for Public Policy and Practice (Liverpool, 2017). 13 This account draws on the narrative in A.Baxter, The Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool Conservation Plan (London 2017), 128-82, http://www.liverpoolcathedral.org.uk/home/conservation -management-plan.aspx (Accessed 20.7.2019). 14 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGZBNR6k-U4 (Accessed 7.6.2019). 15 www.liverpoolcathedral.org.uk/home/venue-hire.aspx (Accessed 20.7.2019). 16 National Museums of Liverpool, The Cathedral That Never Was (Liverpool 2007). 17 E.Harwood, ‘Liturgy and Architecture: The Development of the Centralised Eucharistic Space’, Twentieth Century Architecture, 3, The Twentieth Century Church (London 1998), 68. 18 J.A.Jungmann, ‘Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy’, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, I (New York 1967), 89. 19 /www.liverpoolmetrocathedral.org.uk/venue-hire/ (Accessed 25.7.2019). 20 From 2009/10 to 2017/18 Liverpool experienced the largest per capita public sector budget cut of all local authorities in Great Britain: Centre for Cities: Cities Outlook 2019, (2019), 11-30. 21 F.Salmon, Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of and English Architecture (Aldershot 2000), 210-26. J.Olley, ‘Masters of Building: 12, St George’s Hall, Part I’, Architects’ Journal (18 June 1986), ‘Masters of Building: 12, St George’s Hall, Part II’, Architects’ Journal (25 June 1986). 22 A.Smith, Liverpool City Council, pers. comm. 10.6.2019. 23 ‘Steve Tompkins: A Theatre Should Behave Like A good Host’, Interview by Susannah Clapp, The Guardian (16 October 2016). 24 C.Giles, Building a Better Society: Liverpool’s Historic Institutional Buildings (Swindon 2008), 45 and 92-3. 25 David Watkins, Brock Carmichael, pers. comm. 14.6.2019. 26 Giles, op.cit., 70-71. 27 R.Physick, Played in Liverpool: Charting the Heritage of a City at Play (Swindon 2007), 50-71. 30 Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society

28 https://peoples-project.co.uk/ (Accessed 23.7.2019). 29 P. de Figueiredo, ed, Liverpool World Heritage Site (Liverpool 2014). UNESCO World Heritage List, Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1150 (Accessed 16. 03. 19). On the developing politics of the World Heritage Site the best source is Engage, a community organisation that brings together practical housing issues for inner-city residents with debates on the future of the city’s architecture and urbanism: www.engageliverpool.com/seminar/world-heritage-site-2017 (Accessed 14.3.19). 30 J.Falkingham and T.Bloxham, It Will Never Work (London 2018). C.Giles and B.Hawkins, Storehouses of Empire: Liverpool’s Historic Warehouses (Swindon 2004). C.Couch, S.Fowles and J.Karecha, ‘Reurbanization and Housing Markets in the Central and Inner Areas of Liverpool’, Planning Practice and Research, 24/3 (August 2009), 321-41. 31 Liverpool City Council Planning Committee, ‘ “Conservation Statement” and “Design and Access Statement”, Planning Application 15F/2438 to alter, extend and convert Tobacco Warehouse etc’. 32 For an influential discussion of ‘the creative class’ see R.Florida, The New Urban Crisis (London 2018). liverpool.gov.uk/council/key-statistics-and-data/census/census-summary/ (Accessed 14.3.19). 33 Liverpool City Council, The Index of Multiple Deprivation (Liverpool 2015). Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, The English Indices of Deprivation 2019: Statistical Release (26 September 2019). 34 The classic definition of gentrification can be found in R.Glass, ed, London, Aspects of Change (London 1964), 18. For an exemplary social history of a single house in , including its recent gentrification, see the four part documentary series for BBC2 by D.Olusoga, A House Through Time. See also, for example: ‘Elliott Group starts work on £3.2m Liverpool Georgian Development’, Liverpool Business News, 2 November 2018, https://lbndaily.co.uk (Accessed 18.11.18). 35 House of Commons Library, Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders, Standard Note SN/SP/5953 (2011). P.Brown, A Merseyside Reaction to the Housing Market Renewal Initiative (Merseyside Civic Society 2005). I.Cole, ‘Housing Market Renewal and Demolition in England in the 2000s: The Governance of ‘Wicked Problems’’, International Journal of Housing Policy, 12/3 (2012) 347-66. C.Couch, A.Lord and M.Cocks, ‘Questioning the concept of market failure in housing: the case of Housing Market Renewal in Liverpool’, International Journal of Housing Policy,15/4 (2015) 461-90. P.Leather, B.Nevin, I..Cole and W.Edso, The Housing Market Renewal Programme in England: Development, Impact and Legacy, Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research, Sheffield Hallam University (2012). B.Nevin, ‘Housing Market Renewal in Liverpool: Locating the Gentrification Debate in History, Context and Evidence’, Housing Studies, 25/5 (2010) 715-33. 36 A.Menuge, Ordinary Landscapes: Anfield, Breckfield and the Growth of Liverpool’s Suburbs (Swindon 2008). 37 ‘Project Profile: Anfield Regeneration Project’, Local Authority Building and Maintenance, 28 February 2019. 38 M.Thompson, Mutual housing alternatives and the neighbourhood question: a critical history of social innovation for urban transformation in Liverpool 1960-2015 (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2015). J.McBane, The Rebirth of Liverpool: The Eldonian Way (Liverpool 2008). For a recent analysis of housing design standards see Place Alliance, A Housing Design Audit for England (2020). 39 A.Mousdale, Housing Co-ordinator, Liverpool City Council, pers.comm. 29.10.2018. 40 www.granby4streetsclt.co.uk (Accessed 26.10.2018) and www.homebaked.org.uk (Accessed 31.10.2018). The Liverpool Biennial of contemporary art was founded in 1998 and since its inception has commissioned over 340 artworks and presented work by over 480 artists. 41 placefirst.co.uk/neighbourhood/welsh-streets/ (Accessed 26.10.18). 42 SAVE Britain’s Heritage, Welsh Streets Enquiry Report (London 2014). 43 Avison Young Research The Big Nine: Quarterly Update of Regional Office Activity Q1 2019 www.avisonyoung.co.uk (Accessed 24.7.2019). Office ‘grades’ have no clear definition. Broadly, Grade A is newly built or refurbished, Grade B is built or refurbished in recent years, and Grade C is older. 44 J.Sharples and J.Stonard, Built on Commerce: Liverpool’s Central Business District (Swindon, 2008). J.Sharples, ‘”The visible embodiment of modern commerce”: speculative office buildings in Liverpool, c.1780-1870’, Architectural History, 61 (2018). P. de Figueiredo, ‘Symbols of Empire: The building of the Liverpool Waterfront’, Architectural History, 46 (2003) 229-54. R.Ainsworth and G.Jones, In The Time and good fortune? adaptation and re-use in Liverpool 31

Footsteps of Peter Ellis, Architect of Oriel Chambers Liverpool (Liverpool 2013). 45 For public funding to the former Royal Insurance Building see LOCUS Consulting Ltd for Liverpool City Council, Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage Site Management Plan 2017-24 (2017) 61. 46 D.Littlefield, Liverpool One: Remaking a City Centre (Chichester 2009). I.Ijeh, ‘How Liverpool One is Bucking the Trend in the Retail Sector’, Building (6 February 2019). For a critical view of the privatisation of the management of public space at Liverpool One see A.Minton, Ground Control: Fear and happiness in the twenty-first century city (London 2009). 47 A.Prost, ‘Monuments to the Dead’, in P.Nora, Realms of Memory, II, translated by A.Goldhammer (New York 1996-98). 48 Examples of recent additions are: the memorial to the victims of the 1940 sinking of The Arandora Star, in which 805 people perished; the memorial to the sinking of HMT Lancastria in which 3,000 to 5,000 lost their lives; separate memorials to merchant sailors of Poland, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands who served in the Battle of the Atlantic; the memorial to Captain Johnnie Walker, hero of the Battle of the Atlantic; the memorial of the repatriation of 20,000 POWs and civilians from the Far East in 1945; the memorial to Chinese merchant seamen ‘ …who served this country well during both world wars …’; a of Billy Fury and a group statue of The Beatles; Waiting, a life-size sculpture of a cart horse which ‘ …commemorates 250 years’ service of the working horses of Liverpool …’; a propeller from The Lusitania. All this is in addition to the collection of monuments from earlier in the 20th century, which includes the Memorial to the Missing of the Naval Auxiliary Personnel of the Second World War (1952), the equestrian statue of Edward VII (1921) and the sublime Memorial to the Heroes of the Marine Engine Room (1916), both by Sir William Goscombe John. See also T.Kavanagh, Public Sculpture of Liverpool (Liverpool 1997). 49 Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership, Digest of Tourism Statistics (Liverpool 2015) 26-29. 50 City Residential, http://www.cityresidential.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ Turning-point-for-stalled-developments.pdf (Accessed 14.3.19). 51 O.Wainwright and D.Pegg, ‘Edgy Urban Apartments, lavish promos, and a trail of angry investors’, The Guardian (13 March 2018). 52 baltic.triangle.co.uk/the – world-transformed-a-triumph-for-the-baltic-triangle/ (Accessed 22.10.18). 53 Department for Transport, UK Port Freight Statistics 2017. 54 The British ‘core cities’ are Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. 55 Liverpool City Council, Liverpool Economic Briefing (Liverpool 2016) 17, Table 2.6. 56 For discussions of the ‘port-city’ and its possible future see: J.Belchem, ed, Liverpool 800, Culture Character & History (Liverpool 2006). J.Belchem, Merseypride: Essays in Liverpool Exceptionalism (Liverpool 2006). B.Hatton, ‘Shifted Tideway, Liverpool’s Changing Fortunes’, Architectural Review (28 March 2011). A.Lees, The Hurricane Port, A Social (Edinburgh 2011).T.Hunt, ‘Liverpool’, in Ten Cities that Made an Empire (London 2014). M.Parkinson, Liverpool Beyond the Brink: The remaking of a post-imperial city (Liverpool 2019). 57 For a sense of multiple celebration in Liverpool see: P. de Figueiredo and J.Treuherz, 111 Places in Liverpool That You Shouldn’t Miss (2016). 58 For a discussion of this difficulty see R.Hill, Designs and Their Consequences (New Haven and London 1999), chapters 7 and 8.