Leeds Walk

On arriving at the Leeds City Station pass through the ticket barriers and turn to your left.

Once a convenient car park.

You are now inside the 1938 concourse interior designed by WH Hamlyn, restored in 1999 by Carey Jones Architects.

Atop the station John Poulson’s 1967 City House – now re-clad in the modern manner and badged as Bruntwood owned Platform One.

A reinvention of a Leeds landmark, offering office space for tech and digital businesses of all sizes right at the heart of the city.

The main body of the station was rebuilt 2001-03 by McKellar Architecture to a scheme by ESG Design Architects.

Exiting by the main exit, there is a gentle brick and concrete curve – leading to the side of the Queens Hotel also the work of WH Hamlyn 1938.

A monumental classical facade with discrete Deco detailing.

Nine Bond Court an almost anonymous tower block, leads us into Bond Court, where we find the HSBC by Whitney Son & Austen Hall 1966-69.

Onwards now to 7 Park Row reworked by Box Architects this former Lloyd’s Bank HQ by Abbey Hanson Rowe 1972-77

Park Row is the City’s most sought after business location, benefiting from being perfectly placed centrally between Leeds’ Central Business District and Retail Core. You and your staff will have all that you need to enjoy a work-life balance.

Next door the National Westminster Bank

Replacing George Gilbert Scott’s renowned Beckett’s Bank of 1863-67 demolished in 1965.

Intrigued by the transition of grid and material finish along Park Row.

Up the rise of the Row toward the Henry Moore Institute and City Art Gallery with their modern extensions.

1993 Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones with BDP

1980-82 John Thorp and Neville Conder complete with Moore’s Reclining Woman Elbow of 1980.

Honourable mention to The Light conversion DLG Architects 2002.

Around the corner to Merrion Shopping Centre Gillinson Barnett & Allen 1962-64.

No time to pop in for a pint at the General Wade.

Awaiting yet another reimagining – Ian Purser, architect director at BDP said:

This scheme will create a new destination in an area of regeneration, effectively opening up a ‘new front’ to the Merrion Centre while utilising the existing structure and incorporating contemporary food and beverage facilities.

Just along the way Gerry Anderson meets Morrison’s.

Merrion House to the rear.

BDP’s remodelling and extension of Merrion House office block is an exemplar of sustainable refurbishment. Originally completed in 1974 the building was designed to accommodate Leeds City Council’s office based staff.

A “changing the workplace” initiative has been instigated by the council, adapting to changing working patterns. Flexible office environments, created in both the new and refurbished elements of the building, fully support this.

For me one of the City’s finest post-war buildings the Leeds City College – Technology Campus

The college was originally built as the Branch College of Engineering and Science during the late 1950s and 60s.

It was renamed Kitson College in 1967, and later Leeds College of Technology. In 2009 the college merged with Thomas Danby College and Park Lane College to form Leeds City College, becoming the third largest further education college in the UK.

The Technology Campus has played its part in rock history. The Who’s album Live at Leeds had two tracks recorded here and Pink Floyd’s song See Emily Play was written here after a gig in the building. 

She’s often inclined to borrow somebody’s dreams ’til tomorrow.

Early plans to knock down one of Leeds city centre’s most recognisable buildings were supported by an influential panel of Leeds councillors today.

Developers’ blueprints to replace the former Leeds College of Technology building in Woodhouse Lane with 20-storeys of student accommodation went before a meeting of Leeds City Council’s city plans panel last week.

Leeds Live

Head over the road to the Yorkshire Bank a big brown beat reminiscent of Halifax’s Building Society HQ

The bank expects to have vacated Merrion Way by September of 2021.

Under the underpass aka Leeds Song Tunnel to the Woodhouse Lane Car Park.

Commissioned by Leeds City Council as part of the Arena project the Leeds Song Tunnel  is the creation of designer Adrian Riley, an alumnus of Leeds College of Art.  

Take a peek at the world going on almost underground.

The up to the Leeds Arts University – designed by local practice DLA, the scheme was built by ISG.

Adorned by mosaics re-sited from the Merrion Centre

The magnificent Merrion Centre mosaics created by Eric Taylor 1909-99, artist and former Principal of Leeds College of Art 1956-70, have been installed at Leeds College of Art’s Blenheim Walk building.

More public art in store at the former Polytechnic now University Engineering Buildings – Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall 1955-69.

Curving above the entrance of the Mechanical Engineering building is this glass fibre sculpture. Cast from a clay mould it retains a malleable quality. This is the work of architect Allan Johnson former student of Leeds College of Art.

Around the corner this delightful sculptural window screen.

The American sculptor Mitzi Cunliffe (née Solomon) was born in New York and is renowned for having designed the famous theatrical mask for the BAFTA award. Cunliffe was active as a designer of jewellery, textiles and glass, as well as teaching in later life. She studied Fine Art at Columbia University from 1935-40. In 1949, she came to England when she married a British academic and moved to Manchester. Her first large-scale public piece was created for the Festival of Britain in 1951: ‘Root Bodied Forth’, which was an 8-foot concrete group. In 1955, the same year she designed the famous BAFTA award, she was commissioned to create a major piece for the new Man-Made Fibres building at the University of Leeds. Professor J B Speekman, Head of the Department of Textile Industries, required a piece which would reflect the exciting progress in the field of synthetic fibres. Cunliffe submitted drawings and a maquette for a vast pair of hands with textile fibres crossed between them, to be executed in Portland stone. ‘Man-Made Fibres’ was unveiled by the Duke of Edinburgh when the new building was opened in June 1956. Mitzi Cunliffe appropriately designed her own dress and jewellery for the event. 

Cunliffe spent her entire working life bringing sculpture and architecture together. She wanted her work to be ‘used, rained on, leaned against, taken for granted’, declaring that her life-long dream ‘is a world where sculpture is produced by the yard in factories and used as casually as bricks’. In this case however, ‘Man-Made Fibres’ is positioned so high on the building, now called Clothworkers’ Building South, that it can easily be missed.

Leeds Library

Let’s wend our way homewards via Hubert Dalwood’s 1961 Untitled Bas-Relief now see this on the theatre Stage@Leeds, it was originally up at the University’s Bodington Hall of residence.

Seconds from this theatre Barbara Hepworth’s 1965 Dual Form.

Finally casting our eyes skyward toward William Chattaway’s 1958 Spirit of Enterprise/Hermes.

Originally on the wall of the Midland Bank building in London before the building was was sold in the early eighties. It was saved from potentially being sold for scrap and the four and a half ton sculpture has been flying high on campus since 1983.

Art on Campus