The General Post Office - Spring Gardens The General Post office seen in
the image above once stood on Spring Gardens. It was designed by
the architect J Williams and it was built between 1881 and 1887.
 Pevsner described it as "a tremendous palazzaccio, like a Ministry building in Rome," he made mention of its, "central upper giant portico."  You can see the building below
on my version the
1889 map of the area.
 If you click on the links
below, you can see the inside of the building. The first one show
customers and staff at the telegraph counter. Unfortunately, the
image is strangely oriented sideways but it is interesting. The
link entitled "Memorial Statue" shows a statue erected in honour of the
men of
Manchester's Post Office who died in World War One. As you can
see, it sat in the centre of the rather grand main hall.
The memorial was created
by the Manchester sculptor John Ashton Floyd. It was originally
erected
in 1929 in the main hall of the Spring Gardens general post
office.
When this building closed in the 1960s, the statue was moved to the new
sorting facility on St.
Andrew's Street, behind Piccadilly Station. Then in 1995 it made
its second move to its present site at the
entrance to the Royal Mail Sorting Depot on Oldham Road. The statue
depicts
a group of three figures. Winged Victory is at the centre,
holding a flaming torch. She is flanked by a young boy and girl
and at their feet are the symbols of war including a helmet and a sword.
  You can see the post office, indicated by a red arrow in the aerial photograph below, dated 1953.  *********************
This wasn't the first general
post office building in the city centre. The 1845 map shows a
post office occupying part of the site on which the one above was
built. This one faced on to Brown Street.
 Post Office 1866 |