Manchester is a city known for its cotton mills, but it is its
textile warehouses that remain the distinctive element in its
street-scape and make it unlike any other city in England. From
the mid-19th century onwards, the marketing of textiles came to
dominate Manchester’s economy. For this reason it is the
commercial warehouses, built by the manufacturers, wholesalers,
independent merchants, traders and packing companies during the
century after 1840, that are the most potent visual symbols of
the city’s Victorian character. Warehouse buildings of the 1820s
and 1830s had little architectural pretension and they tended to
follow Manchester’s mills in adopting a strictly utilitarian
approach. As trade further accelerated and the city’s merchants
became wealthier, the architectural style of warehouses changed,
the merchants aspiring to premises of more impressive appearance
to reflect, to potential customers, their growing stature. From
the 1840s, they achieved this by adopting the Italian palazzo
style, inspi