Rebuilding “Merchants’ Hotel” Oldham Street/ Spear Street/ Back Piccadilly

NEW HOTEL FOR MANCHESTER – A further improvement of Oldham Street, involving the reconstruction of the Merchants’ Hotel, the side frontage of which overlooks the back of Messrs Woolworth’s premises in Piccadilly, was sanctioned by the Corporation Improvements and Buildings Committee at a meeting held yesterday at the Town Hall. The plans for the new hotel, which is to be set back about ten feet to the new building line approved by the Committee have been prepared by Colonel George Westcott (the Deputy Mayor of Manchester), and at the close of the meeting the Committee took the unusual course of intimating that if the architects in the city would come along with similar plans for such important streets as Oldham Street they would always receive the most favourable consideration. The Committee, Alderman Woollam, the chairman, informed a Manchester Guardian representative, had been greatly impressed with the plans for the new building on account of its proposed height, the elevation and the general architectural effect. It was a type, he added, which they would like to see adopted as a model for the whole street. The new hotel, when completed, will be slightly higher than the adjacent Woolworth building, with the elevation of which it will be in keeping, and will consist of five storeys. [Manchester Guardian 12 February 1930 page 13].

Reference    Builder 28 March 1930 Page 643
Reference    Builder 6 June 1930 page 1107
Reference    Manchester Guardian 12 February 1930 page 13