Cottonopolis....

I love the contrast between these two buildings on Oxford Street in Manchester. Both were built at the beginning of the last century. At that time Manchester was the ninth largest city on the planet and at the height of its power as Cottonopolis. 25% of all the wealth in the country was produced in this city at a time when the UK was the strongest country in the world with the biggest economy. Manchester was one of the industrial powerhouses of the British Empire.

The Manchester cotton barons lined the city's streets with impressive offices for their companies while showering the city's institutions with with their largesse. St James's House was built in brilliant white Portkand stone, something expressing 'hope over experience' given the pollution that turned everything soot black. The Tootal Broadhurst Lee building is all red brick and terracotta tiles. Both look good against the blue of the sky.

World War I was a decade away then these buildings were put up. Although Manchester suffered no damage in that war, the economy did and Manchester went into slow decline. The Great Recession of the 1930s and World War II hastened the decline and after the war the cotton industry decamped to the Far East. By the 1980s people were thinking about a managed decline of the city. Three decades on we are in a much stronger position with these buildings, 'memorials to Imperial bombast' I heard them called, being joined by the modern glass and steel towers of the new economy.