Hotel Gotham...

Manchester has a new hotel. Well that’s not news these days except that this one is a new 5* one, the Hotel Gotham in the former Midland Bank building on King Street. The building is one of Manchester’s architectural gems, a huge Art Deco influenced ziggurat of a building occupying and entire city block in Portland stone at the top of King Street.

It was built in the 1930s at the same time as New York was building its grand skyscrapers like the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. Add a couple of hundred metres to the Manchester building and it wouldn’t look out of place on the New York skyline. With a nod to its New York influences and its 1930s roots it’s called the Hotel Gotham. The style of the rooms and public spaces is 1930s but with 21st century comfort and super-fast broadband. Pictures of the interior look stunning. The ground floor banking hall has been occupied by Janie Oliver’s Manchester restaurant, in Art Deco opulence, for a few years now. The fitting out of the hotel had to go on without disturbing the diners in the restaurant and, cleverly hiding all the building materials and the like behind the building, diners wouldn’t have noticed a thing.

Its great to see this wonderful building back fully in use and so classily done. The address is King Street but, as Jamie got the main doors of the old bank building for his restaurant, the entrance to the hotel is round the corner in Spring Gardens. The staff uniforms are cool as well.