Bank. 1891 by A and P Waterhouse for Foster and Co bankers; extended in 1935 by Munro Cautley and Barefoot of Ipswich. Limestone ashlar with bands of red brick with tile roof; limestone ashlar extension with stone tile roof. Plan: Situated on large corner site with 1935 extension on apex of corner at south end. Dutch Renaissance style with neo-Tudor 1935 extension.
Exterior: 3 storeys and attics. Symmetrical 1:2:1 bay Sidney Street elevation, the end bays break forward with elaborate Dutch gables with pilasters pinnacles stone balcony to second floor windows and consoles to scrolled pediments of attic windows; similar pediments to centre first floor windows; pairs of round arch ground floor windows; to right (S) round arch doorway with Jacobean Ionic column, scrolled broken pediment and niche above with putto, above which is tall, elaborate hexagonal clock tower with lantern over and tiled spire with lead lucarnes and little lantern at apex. The east side facing Hobson Street has a fine and complex elevation pilastered and gabled in ashlar with red brick bands. The 1935 south corner extension is relatively plain, gabled to left and right of larger corner gable which has 2- storey oriel on lst and 2nd floors; stone mullion-transom windows with leaded panes.
Interior: 1891 part has very fine tiled interior with an Italianate octagonal banking hall; the arcade supporting a great dome with a glazed lantern above; the whole, except for the lantern, faced in moulded glazed tiles (probably by Burmantofts) with classical motifs. Original joinery includes curved counters with panelled fronts in arcade, doors and doorcases, a Gothic clock; tessellated floors.
Alfred Waterhouse, (born July 19, 1830, Liverpool, Eng.—died Sept. 22, 1905, Yattendon, Berkshire), English architect who worked in the style of High Victorian medieval eclecticism. He is remembered principally for his elaborately planned complexes of educational and civic buildings.
Waterhouse was an apprentice to Richard Lane in Manchester. His position as a designer of public buildings was assured as early as 1859, when his Gothic Revival design won the open competition for the Manchester Assize Courts.
In 1868 he won the competition for the Manchester Town Hall, which showed a firmer and perhaps more original handling of the Gothic manner. That same year he began rebuilding Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. This was not his only university work, for he also designed Balliol College (1867–69), Oxford, and Pembroke College (1871), Cambridge. Among his other important educational commissions were Owens College (1870–98; now Victoria University of Manchester) and St. Paul’s School (c. 1885), Hammersmith, London. (After the school moved to its present site at Barnes in 1968, the original building was demolished.)
Many of his buildings (e.g., the Romanesque-inspired Natural History Museum [1873–81] in London) are built with brick (often burnt) and terra-cotta, with extensive use of decorative ironwork and exposed metal structure. Waterhouse also designed a few churches and country houses—e.g., Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church (1883) in Camden, London, and Hutton Hall (1865) at Guisborough.