Contrast..

British cities don't generally have sweeping views and tree lined avenues leading to set piece buildings. None are like the imperial capitals of Paris or Vienna. Even London only put a couple in, like The Mall, as an afterthought. Our cities are more like the trading cities of Renaissance Italy. They were designed to be money making machines and every square inch was designed for profit. Like Venice, Florence, Milan the buildings in Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds crowd in together vying for attention. Only Liverpool has an impression of planning and space and that only happened because the Mersey gave them the chance to range their buildings along the waterfront.

We do have architectural gems in Manchester but the charm of the city is that they creep up on you, you turn a corner and there they are. Or, like in this picture, you catch a glimpse of one down a narrow street. I was walking through Spinningfields when I happened to glance up a side street and caught a sighting of part of the beautiful, Art Deco Sunlight House between the new buildings in the area. In the distance, at the end of Deansgate, you can see a sliver of the Hilton Tower.

Sunlight House is an interesting building. If you know it, it does look a little stumpy and unfinished in its site. This is because it was originally supposed to have been Manchester's first New York style skyscraper like the Empire State or Chrysler Buildings. There was to be a tower behind the present building next to the Opera House theatre. The building we know today was built in the late 1930s. But the tower was stopped because of the start of World War II. Hitler did a lot of damage to Manchester and the stopping of this project is another crime we can lay at his door.

After the war the world had moved on and the U.K. was experiencing real austerity. People complain about austerity now but I imagine that people in the late 1940s would be delighted to be living the way we are now. Any money there was about then was being used to rebuild the city's damaged housing stock and repairing our transport and industrial infrastructure. There was little, if any, money for trophy skyscraper projects in central Manchester. It's sad we didn't get all of the plan. The building we have is wonderful. And I hear it's haunted as well.