Contrasts....

When people complain about a new building being put up near to or next to an older one they seem to forget that it's always happened. Especially in a city like Manchester that doesn't have a 'house' style. It's not like Bath or Edinburgh with their beautiful, but slightly dull, Georgian crescents and parades. Manchester has a much more exciting and eclectic mix of architecture than either of those cities.

Here we have, on the left, Art Deco Canada House on Chepstow Street, the Edwardian Baroque St James Building and the Tootal Broadhust Building facing each other across Oxford Street. And finally there is a sliver of Lee House built in the style of a 1930s skyscraper. It is eight storeys tall but was intended to be a seventeen storey tower, the tallest building in Europe at the time. They started it in the late 1920s but after the Wall Street Crash and the subsequent Great Depression, they stopped building it after the eight floor. Sad that it was never completed. Sunlight House, on Quay Street, was also supposed to have a tower element but Mr Hitler, the Luftwaffe and World War II put an end to that. Very sad.