The Reform Club, Manchester. Election Time. c. 1890. Source: Club-Land, 85.
"Liberalism finds a no less luxurious home than Conservatism in modern Manchester. The Reform Club, which is situated at the top of King Street and Spring Gardens, is a fine structure, designed by Mr. E. Salomons. The present building was opened with a banquet, which was held on October 11, 1871, followed by a meeting in the Free Trade Hall, at which Earl Granville was the chief speaker. The architecture is Venetian, freely treated. On either side of the main entrance in King Street are two light windows. Above the door is an elegant balcony, from which, in the stirring times of political conflict, addresses have been delivered to earnest Liberals massed in the street below. There are five windows, the central one opening upon the balcony. The capitals of the columns supporting the windows are enriched with sculpture. The third floor is lighted by flve windows in pairs, and above all rises an elegant open parapet. At the east and west angles of this front are turrets, corresponding in character with the main front, except that each of the three windows on the middle floor is smaller than the adjoining one; while above them are panels containing emblematic life-sized figures, representing on the east turret the Arts, and on the west the Sciences, At the roof of each turret is a lantern with a parapet, above which rises a pyramidical roof. The principal doorway leads into a vesti- bule. On the same floor are a lavatory and a reading-room. On the first landing is the main dining-room, a fine lofty apartment with windows looking into the three streets already named. The ceiling is of decorated pitch pine. On the next floor are private dining and committee rooms, and above the principal dining-room is a billiard-room, in which there are no fewer than five billiard tables. The annual subscription is three guineas, and the entrance fee five. There are upwards of two thousand members; a percentage of these, however, as is also the case at the Conservative Club, being country members, who are admitted at a considerably lower rate" (85-86).
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Text and formatting by George P. Landow [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the University of Toronto and Internet Archive and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Hatton, Joseph. Clubland London and Provincial. London: J. S. Vertie, 1890. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of Toronto Library. Web. 29 February 2012.
Last modified 8 November 2012