Skyliner

Plaza: Dreams Without Frontiers

A small article originally published in Manchester Art Gallery’s Dreams Without Frontiers publication, curated by Dave Haslam. The theme is Sixties Utopia and my article is about the Piccadilly Hotel (now the Mercure)

What does Piccadilly Hotel mean to you? To George Best it’s hiding in a cleaner’s cupboard from Matt Busby. To the ears of the city its cantilevered form straddles the headquarters of Piccadilly Radio. It’s a hotel built only for cars. It’s the future suspended in the 60s.

Piccadilly Hotel (to eventually become the Mercure) has no ground floor pedestrian entrance - because this is the future and why walk when you have a car. A vast William Mitchell mural made of broken pianos spans four whole floors of the stairwell because art and architecture go hand-in-hand in the future.

William Mitchell constructing the mural

One face of the decade’s utopia is Simon Dee who filmed the end credits of his talk show Dee Time on the concrete car ramp of the hotel. In his convertible Jaguar, with a model on his arm, Dee spins down the concentrically-looping concrete ramp with the insouciance of a man with no troubles. And in the 60s he had none. Dee’s 60s were his dreams; no frontiers. From his beginnings in pirate radio his career spiralled ever onwards and his lifestyle became one of a playboy. His 60s are forever captured in a bell jar of parody by way of the film Austin Powers, based on Dee himself.

Dee Time closing credits

And as he hits the road and waves goodbye to the crowd at the foot of the ramp, upstairs Albert Finney (Charlie Bubbles, 1967) lays supine on a bed, outside Julie Christie strolls across the concrete mega-structure (Billy Liar, 1963), and everybody else? They turn a blind eye to the fact that the ceiling collapsed twice during the opening ceremony because this place, this hotel, is promised to be the greatest hotel in all of Europe.

Julie Christie, Billy Liar. City Tower in the background.

Manchester Art Gallery and Dave Haslam present Dreams Without Frontiers; a publication to accompany the current exhibition.

Skyliner contributed an article under the themes Sixties Utopia, focussing on Piccadilly Hotel. There are contributions from a range of wonderful people including Maureen Ward, Julie Campbell, Dan Russell, and Greg Thorpe. Greg is responsible for one of my favourite regular columns: Manchester in Residents, over on his blog Manhattanchester.

Make sure to pick up a copy from the gallery.

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In 2012 the CIS tower celebrated it’s 50th year (as well as it being the international year of the Co-Op) and this year the new headquarters at Angel Place will open. In tribute and celebration Skyliner presents an exclusive look at the 1962 commemorative brochure.

Thank you to S.L. Scott for the beautiful artwork in the image above and to the Co-Operative for allowing reproduction of the brochure.

“The Directors of the C.I.S have pleasure in enclosing Commemorative Booklet of that great occasion on 22nd October, 1962, when H.R.H. The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, K.G., K.T., so graciously opened the new building in the presence of a large number of guests from Home and Overseas.

It is hoped much pleasure will be derived from the contents of this souvenir booklet and that the typescript of what was said on that notable occasion will recall many happy memories.”

“New Head Office premises of the Co-operative Insurance Society Ltd, Miller Street, Manchester, England”

“To the applause of a large crowd that had gathered in Miller Street, Prince Philip, accompanied by Rt. Hon. The Earl of Derby, M.C., Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire, walks to entrance where he was greeted by Messrs. Wild and Dinnage, who accompanied him on his tour of the building.”

“(Top right) The first visit is 60 feet below ground to the Control Room

Minut Men

The totems of Salford University’s Allerton Building, and other works by William Mitchell.

“I don’t give a hoot if you don’t like them, just as long as you look at them”

Whilst on The Crescent in Salford, continue towards Salford University’s Allerton Building and there you will find the striking Minut Men by William Mitchell.

Perhaps the first critique of this concrete trio was by Prince Philip, in 1967 when he opened what was then the Technical College, and exclaimed ‘What the hell is that?”.

Manchester’s Public Art

From Lemn Sissay’s series of poems adorning the walls and pavements through to the classical Ford Madox Brown murals at the Town Hall, but what other artworks lie in wait of discovery throughout the city? What about off the streets and into the everyday; the negative spaces where you spend so much time? There is almost always art in these functional buildings, only it’s not usually very good. Offices and art seem to exist in parallel universes to each other, with the best attempts often as depressing as a faded, mass-produced watercolour in a crass gold frame, strip lit for added nausea.

In The Midland Hotel, in the Wyvern Room, the walls are lined with Eadweard Muybridge photographs. Muybridge was fascinated with the locomotion of animals and was a pioneer in his field, capturing what the human eye could not perceive as separate motions. British born, but working mainly in California, Muybridge killed his wife’s lover and Phillip Glass produced an opera based on the story.

The Castle Hotel was once home to a mural of the former landlady; Kath Smethurst. The mural was created by Mark Kennedy, a prolific mosaic artist in Manchester but aside from the artistic merit of the piece it was the material used that really set this apart – the grouting was made from Kath’s ashes. Kennedy has used the same method for his mosaic of Bernard Manning on the wall of Manning’s Embassy Club in Harpuhey.

(You can hear me talk to Documentally about The Castle’s macabre mosaic, and other Manchester curiosities, for Northern Quarter Stories here)