Professor Robert Kronenburg is the Roscoe Chair in the University of Liverpool’s School of Architecture
“Liverpool’s Royal Liver Building is a famous landmark for the city and recognised around the world.
Its unique qualities have now attracted the BBC’s One Show to explore its history. I was asked to advise the programme makers on the building’s fascinating story and take part in the film, which was hosted by television reporter John Sergeant.
Liverpool’s architectural story
It was really interesting to have the opportunity to investigate this fascinating part of Liverpool’s architectural story – a building that is essentially doing the same job today as it was when built over a hundred years ago.
The BBC team filmed my interview on the Liver Building’s roof, which was a great opportunity to get up close to the structure and see the city from an unusual vantage point.
At the turn of the nineteenth century Liverpool Corporation funded the development of three new sites for what are now called the Three Graces – the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board building, The Cunard Building, and the Liver Building.
The Liver Building was the second to be built and by far the most ambitious. The architect Walter Aubrey Thomas was well known in Liverpool, having designed the State Insurance building and Tower Buildings, however, the Liver Building used an innovative form of construction and method of building.
Constructed using reinforced concrete, faced with a decorative weather screen of granite, the structure utilised an early form of industrialised building with sand, cement and aggregate. These materials were delivered to the basement, mixed into concrete and then taken to the current working area by electric vertical hoists and a narrow gauge railway system. In this way each floor was completed on average in just nineteen days.
As well as its remarkable construction the building has an unusual architectural style with Byzantine elements in the towers, and a Baroque porch, though its main character hints at contemporary architecture from across the Atlantic. This is a theme that may well have been influenced by my predecessor, Charles Reilly, the highly influential professor of architecture at Liverpool who favoured the North American styles used by architects such as H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan.
Liver Birds
The story of the Liver Birds, the two sculptures that perch on top of the towers built by the Bromsgrove Guild, the same company that manufactured the gates of Buckingham Palace, is also told in the BBC programme. Designed by German émigré sculptor Carl Bernard Bartel, the copper sheathed creatures are seen in close-up thanks to a remote controlled octocopter used in the filming. After his famous competition win to design the birds, Bartel’s story was a sad one as he was interned during the First World War and then drifted into obscurity.
The Royal Liver Building was designed specifically as an advertisement both for the company that funded its construction (it was three times larger than they needed, renting out the remaining floors) and for the city, a globally recognised arrival point for travellers arriving at the city from the Empire and the Americas.
With its great height, unusual and eclectic style and remarkable rooftop sculptures it certainly achieved its aim.”
The One Show programme can be viewed online here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03c348y/The_One_Show_04_10_2013/
I worked in the Liver Building for 8 years and was lucky to go on the roof myself – the view down the Mersey is stunning – though I did wonder about the story I was told about the caretaker and his family who many years ago who used to live “on the roof”