A three-storey rectangular Edwardian Baroque building on an island site, the Manchester Stock Exchange was built by Bradshaw, Gass and Hope in Portland stone. The ground floor features the same channelled rock face rustication that one finds at Stockport Central Library. There is a strong cornice and two further floors, with the central five bays having oriel windows surmounted by colonnaded windows. The end two bays are open pedimented with coupled columns, and the square headed doors feature carved shields in their pediments. Pevsner describes the interior as having "a magnificent hall with a dome supported at the corners by pilasters clad in sensuous green and cream marble."
History
The first stock exchange opened in Manchester as a branch of the London Stock Exchange; its purpose was to allow local businesses to raise money for investment locally. Cotton and cotton goods were traded at the Royal Exchange. It fuelled the joint stock company boom that built the Lancashire cotton mills after 1860s Cotton Famine. It was continually short of space, in 1907 Bradshaw, Gass and Hope were commissioned to build a new exchange that reflected the confidence of the community. This was not a propitious moment as the chaos of the Great War was followed by the depression of the 1920s.
Closure
The exchange continued to trade until the year 2000, when it and the Liverpool Stock Exchange were closed as the finance industry retrenched in London. The building resorted to acting as a restaurant until that too changed and the then owners put it up for sale for around £1.5 million. The building was bought by Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs, two former Manchester United football stars, in 2013. They have planning permission to turn it into a 35-room boutique hotel with basement gym and spa, also featuring a rooftop private members’ terrace and a ground-floor restaurant and bar. Manchester became the focus of anti-austerity protests in October 2015, when the governing Conservative Party held their annual conference at a venue in the city centre. A direct-action group occupied the building site with the aim of providing accommodation and advice to the homeless and rough sleepers. Messrs Neville and Giggs did not apply for an eviction order, and lent the organisers their moral support and allowed them to stay in the uncompleted building over the winter.
