School Board Offices. Listed Building. Part of the whole (former) Municipal Buildings complex, along with the Central Library and Art Gallery. Now used by Leeds Metropolitan University. George Corson (1817-1896). Design chosen by competition, 1876. Built 1878-1881. Calverley Street, on the corner with Great George Street, Leeds. First photograph © Stephen Richards, who previously submitted a smaller version of it to the Geograph Project. This photograph can be reused with a copyright attribution under the Creative Commons Licence. Remaining photographs, captions and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee. [You can use these images too without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on the images for larger pictures.]
Left: Upper storey and roofline. Described as "one of Leeds' most impressive Victorian buildings," this has a "projecting centre rising to an octagonal attic pavilion with carved coat of arms and pointed roof" (Wrathmell 75) Though this building is generally similar in style to the Municipal Offices to its south, and was also clearly intended to harmonise with the Town Hall opposite it on Calverley Street Corson seems to have taken the advice printed in The Builder, to give the offices their own "separate and distinctive character" (see Wrathmell 75). The detailing is very fine: notice the Corinthian columns, carving over the windows and on the frieze between the capitals, the balusters and the urn finials. The attic storey housed the examination rooms (Leach and Pevsner 416). Right: Plaque on the wall of this building. To have planned such a grand building in this key location, at the hub of civic power, shows the importance attached to education at this time. Even today the wording of the plaque speaks of the city's pride in responding to E. W. Forster's Education Act of 1870, and for the first time providing an elementary eduction for all the children of the municipality.
Sources
"Civic Court and Attached Railings, Leeds" (formerly listed a s Leeds School Board Offices). British Listed Buildings. Web. 1 March 2012.
Leach, Peter, and Nikolaus Pevsner. Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009. Print.
Wrathmell, Susan, with John Minnis. Leeds. Pevsner Architectural Guides. New Haven and Yale: Yale University Pres, 2005. Print.
Last modified 1 March 2012