Until the beginning of the 18th century, this was an area of heath-land, beyond the limits of the town, partially enclosed into fields and interspersed with windmills and lime-kilns. Shaw's Brow, effectively the current William Brown Street, was one of the principal coaching roads to the east and there were a few cottages and some almshouses along that road. During the 18th century, the town gradually expanded across the area with the erection of the Infirmary in 1749 and St. John's Church in 1784. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the area began to be comprehensively redeveloped to create the formally planned environment that we still see today. 

The William Brown Street Conservation Area now forms the principal cultural quarter of Liverpool, where a high concentration of the city's major public buildings are located. The most imposing of these is St. George's Hall (1840-55), universally acclaimed by historians and architectural critics as the outstanding example of European neo-classical architecture. It is a monumental building that demonstrates a mastery of scale, form and classical Greek detail. It stands detached and prominent between the open spaces of St. George's Plateau and St. John's Gardens, and occupies high ground above the old city centre to the east. Not only was its design based upon a Greek temple, but its position was chosen and its height elevated on its high podium to increase its dominance over its surroundings. 

The northern edge of the area is defined by the former County Sessions Court, the Walker Art Gallery, the Picton Library, the Museum and the former College of Technology. They comprise a group of imposing classical buildings from the second half of the 19th century. The ordered arrangement and scale of these buildings with their classical columns, pediments, porticoes, cornices and sculpture help to create an exceptionally fine parade of civic buildings. They are arranged on the rising ground, linking the old city below with later expansion to the east, and are splayed along two axes around the fulcrum of the circular Picton Library, which faces and reflects the north apse of St. George's Hall. 

The east edge of the area is formed by buildings of contrasting design, but which nevertheless create an enclosing backdrop to St. George's Plateau. Alfred Waterhouse's former North Western Hotel (1871) is a monumental structure ornamented with turrets and steeply pitched dormered roofs. Behind it stands one of the two great iron roofed sheds of Lime Street Station. The arched colonnade of the south shed is unfortunately obscured by a row of 1960s shops (soon to be demolished). To the north is the neo-Grecian Empire Theatre. 

The lower, west end of the area is focussed upon the portal of the Queensway Tunnel (1934), with roads and flanking walls concentrating upon the void leading to Birkenhead. That portal and those flanking walls are themselves masterpieces of the fusion of art and technology and when one emerges from that long winding tunnel, the open character of St. John's Gardens and the power of St. George's Hall are at their most dramatic. 

A strong element of the area is the abundance of statuary and monuments, both freestanding and integral to the buildings. The Steble Fountain and the Wellington Memorial occupy the triangular space at the east end of William Brown Street, but it is in St. John's Gardens and St. George's Plateau where most of the monuments are strategically located, effectively creating an outdoor sculpture gallery. When combined with the surrounding grand buildings, the authentic street furniture and the traditional natural paving materials, the monuments form an important part of a complete cultural landscape that has been created by classical formal planning. 

Lime Street Station
1867- 1879
Grade II
The present station comprises two parallel sheds each covered by a wide curved iron and glass roof. The north shed was begun in 1867 and, at the time, was the widest in the world with a span of 200 feet. The engineers were W. Baker and F. Stevenson. It replaced successive earlier sheds on the same site, the first built in 1836 and its replacement in 1851. The almost identical south shed was completed in 1879. The earliest terminus at Lime Street, erected by 1836, offered the opportunity to create a suitably dramatic point of arrival in Liverpool and the Town Council contributed £2000 towards the construction of its two storey classical façade by leading Liverpool architect John Foster Jnr. This building seems to have set the stage for the subsequent developments in the immediate area: St. George's Hall on the plateau in front of the station and the collection of civic and cultural buildings on William Brown Street, which are also in the classical style. Together these have become the forum of Liverpool. 

St George's Hall
1840 - 55
Grade I
The desire for a new venue for Liverpool's musical events had existed amongst its citizens prior to the opening of the reign of Queen Victoria. To mark her coronation the Corporation's mayor, William Rathbone presided over the laying of the foundation stone for a concert hall, to be known as St George's Hall, in the grounds of the Old Infirmary, close to the newly opened station in Lime Street. A competition for its design was held and won by the little-known, young prodigy architect from London, Harvey Lonsdale Elmes. At the same time the Corporation also held a competition for new Assize Courts on adjacent land closer to Lime Street Station, as part of its grand plan for a civic forum for Liverpool in this area. Elmes won again and soon there were moves to combine the two projects. 

Elmes' third design resulted in the magnificent edifice, which today still dominates St George's Plateau and the surrounding buildings. Elmes died, probably exhausted by his efforts, before the hall was completed. He had worked closely with engineer Robert Rawlinson, preparing notes and drawings for the finishing details and his work was completed by architect, family friend and advisor Charles Robert Cockerell though Cockerell made some changes to Elmes' proposals for the internal decoration. Work began in earnest in 1841 and, despite Elmes' death, was carried through to completion in 1855 when its opening was celebrated with three days of concerts. 

St George's Hall is a masterpiece; its free neo-Grecian exterior encloses a richly adorned Roman interior: a great rectangular tunnel-vaulted hall, inspired by the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, bounded by the two courts to north and south, which are linked by corridors running along the hall's long sides. This simple spatial solution, handled with dexterity, echoes the exterior treatments. At the south end of the building, where the ground falls away he placed a great portico, containing a double row of eight Corinthian columns, which now stands at the top of flights of steps designed by Cockerell. It announces the scale and significance of Liverpool's forum to those approaching it along Lime Street with the Latin inscription Artibus Legibus Consiliis Locum Municipes Constituerunt Anno Domini MLCCCXLI (For Arts, Law and Counsel the townspeople built this place in 1841). It is a foil for his east elevation, which he always intended should contain the main entrance to create and complement the ceremonial function of the plateau. Here an even greater, thirteen-bay portico, topped by an attic rather than a pediment, allows entry into the eastern long, tunnel-vaulted corridor where one may either go directly into the Great Hall itself or to left or right to the Assize Courts. 

At the north end there is no entrance but instead an apse, with attached Corinthian columns, through which there is access to the north entrance hall and the Small Concert Room above it. The west side of the building lay very close to the now-demolished St John's Church and so is flatter than the other elevations. The central fifteen of its 29 bays have giant pilasters. Above all there is a long, high attic storey. 

The Great Hall's sumptuously decorated interior celebrates the Corporation of Liverpool and its port, as well as its dedicatory saint, at every opportunity. The panels of the vault include the Coat of Arms of Liverpool, Greek and Roman symbols of commerce and authority (the caduceus and fasces), mermaids and tridents. The vault is supported on massive red granite columns and spandrels containing figures portraying those qualities Victorian Liverpool aspired to: Fortitude, Prudence, Science, Art, Justice and Temperance. The whole vault structure has a weighty appearance which is deceptive: it incorporates hollow bricks - the structure as well as the design of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome had inspired Elmes - which also serve as part of the hall's sophisticated and in its day unique ventilation system. The Minton Hollins encaustic tile floor repeats the coat of arms and incorporates the mythical Liver Bird, Neptune, sea nymphs, dolphins and tridents. It too is part of the ventilation system: grilles are set into the rim of its large central sunken section. 

The huge bronze doors and even the pendant lights and stained glass all continue the decorative theme of the grandeur of the port of Liverpool: the monogram SPQL adapts the well-known Roman phrase to "the Senate and People of Liverpool". And calling further upon that phrase life-like statues of Liverpool's great men are seen on either side of the Hall, for example William Ewart Gladstone, Liberal statesman and four times Prime Minister, Samuel Robert Graves, merchant and ship owner and Joseph Mayer, principal benefactor of the Liverpool Museum. Finally and though not part of Elmes' plan, this concert hall contains what was, in its day, the finest example of that most popular of Victorian musical instruments, the organ. This too was originally linked to the heating and ventilation system, its bellows being powered by the same steam engine. 

By contrast the decoration of the semi-circular Small Concert Room is more reserved and it is entirely the work of Cockerell. Its colour palette is restrained: white, cream, honey with touches of gilt and blue; its plasterwork uses only classical patterns and motifs but includes the beautiful caryatids supporting the gallery. The exceptions are the panels, which bear the names of composers, such as Mozart, Mendelsohn, Beethoven and Haydn. Once again grilles for the ventilation system were incorporated into the decorations. 

The Crown and Civil Court accommodation at either end of the Great Hall was linked by both long corridors, but, on the west side of the building, access could also be obtained to a suite of rooms including two minor courts and a law library. Cells were provided in the basement. In design terms the large courtrooms continue the Imperial Roman theme of the interior: the Civil Court has a coved ceiling and the Crown Court a tunnel vault. The decoration of these two rooms is appropriately restrained given their purpose but does include the red granite columns used in the Great Hall. The building's ventilation system also operated here and was further refined in the Courts where judges and court clerks could turn valves beneath their seats to control their own localised environment. 

Formal occupation by the courts, which had gradually dominated the rest of the Hall in the twentieth century, ceased in 1984 when new facilities opened elsewhere in the city. In 1993 the Hall reopened for public use and work is now on site to maximise public access and use of this centrepiece of Liverpool's civic ensemble. 

Around the exterior of the Hall are elegant cast iron lamp standards, in the form of entwined dolphins. The original 40 were the work of Cockerell; the City Council has added replicas on St George's Plateau and William Brown Street to improve lighting. 

William Brown Museum and Library
1857 - 60
Grade II*
The completion of the magnificent new hall on St George's Plateau set the pattern for other civic projects on adjacent land. The gradient of the steep road to the north, formerly known as Shaw's Brow, was improved and the removal of buildings on each side of it was proposed. Although there were setbacks due to site difficulties and costs, the Liverpool Improvements Act was passed and a competition was opened in 1855 for a new museum and public library. Local MP William Brown donated £6,000, to which the Town Council added £10,000 and the commission was given to architect Thomas Allom. His scheme was later modified by Corporation architect John Weightman. The project's 

financial difficulties were overcome by Brown's further donation of £35,000 and the building finally opened to great acclaim in 1860 when 400,000 people attended the ceremony. Brown received a knighthood and Shaw's Brow was renamed in his honour. 

Bombing during the last war resulted in the loss of the interior of the 1860 building (rebuilt in the 1960s) but the William Brown Street elevation has survived intact. It is a restrained and well-proportioned classical composition with a deep central portico and prominent projecting end bays. These have Corinthian columns and pilasters respectively and incorporate many other classical forms and motifs. Originally an elevated plateau with steps on either side gave access to the front of the portico but in 1902 this was replaced with the present wide and dramatic flight of steps, which now complete the ensemble. 

Lime Street Chambers (former North Western Hotel)
Opened 1871
Grade II
The 330-room hotel was designed by Alfred Waterhouse to serve passengers using Lime Street Station, the present terminus discussed above, for which it provides a monumental stone façade. Its French renaissance theme, continued into the grand entrance hall and former buffet of the interior, is the only design at odds with the classical theme used elsewhere in the area but its scale and symmetry create a strong backdrop to the fine assembly of civic buildings. Visitors to the City and those travelling beyond by ship were afforded views from it across St George's Plateau and William Brown Street. It is now a student hall of residence. 

Walker Art Gallery
Opened 1877
Grade II*
The citizens of Liverpool invested their private wealth and art collections to create the gallery reflecting the rise in interest in public art, which was considered an essential element in late Victorian city culture. It was designed by architects Sherlock and Vale and named after its principal benefactor, Alderman Andrew Barclay Walker, at that time Lord Mayor of Liverpool. The site selected on William Brown Street was above that of the museum and library. An extension had already been planned for the latter at the point where the street's axis turns and alignment of the new art gallery reflects this change. 

A classical portico is the centrepiece of the exterior, which includes friezes of scenes from the city's history, and is surmounted by a personification of Liverpool (now a replica; the original is in the nearby Conservation Centre) holding a trident and a ship's propeller. It became clear almost at once that the original building would need to be expanded. Sherlock was invited to design additional galleries - six were added - together with storage accommodation. The extension at the rear, again paid for by Sir Andrew Barclay Walker (knighted for his generosity), was complete by 1884, and the building was extended again in 1931-33 by Sir Arnold Thornley. The recently restored classical interior houses one of Britain's greatest art collections. 

Picton Reading Room and Hornby Library
1875 - 9 and 1906
Grade II*
Before returning to work on the extension to the Walker Art Gallery, Sherlock designed and built the Museum and Library extension known as the Picton Reading Room after Sir James Picton, chairman of the Libraries and Museums Committee who laid its foundation stone. The semi-circular façade ingeniously disguises the change in direction and ground level of William Brown Street at this point and ensures the uninterrupted flow of the classical streetscape. The drum-like exterior, surrounded by detached Corinthian columns and surmounted by a rich entablature, balustrade and domed roof, was intended to echo Greek and Roman temples and to function internally like the British Museum Reading Room. Unfortunately in the minds of Victorian Liverpudlians it suggested a more prosaic structure and became known as Picton's Gasometer. In 1906 a further library extension, still in the classical mode, the Hornby Library by Corporation Surveyor Thomas Shelmerdine, was added to the rear. 

County Sessions House
1882-1884
Grade II*
The architects F. & G. Holme were commissioned to design a new building to house three courtrooms and their attendant facilities, from barristers' library to cells. They produced an opulent if eclectic interior within a classical framework whose exterior shows the firm's fine control of decoration focusing on the façade to William Brown Street. Its scale and design continues the classical theme established there. It also completes the vista at the north end east end of St George's Plateau. Like buildings to the west on William Brown Street its main façade has a bold central portico carried on four pairs of Corinthian columns; within the pediment is the coat of arms of the County of Lancaster. The degree of external decoration (swags above the courtroom windows, enriched panels on the attic storey) is in contrast to the sombre purpose for which the House was built. Since it opened it has remained virtually unchanged and is now part of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside. 

College of Technology and Museum Extension
1896-1901
Grade II*
By the end of the nineteenth century the museum collections had grown considerably. The Town Council considered it prudent to combine the urgent need for additional storage and display space with a growing demand for a new School of Science, Technology and Art. A limited architectural competition was launched in 1896 and won by the experienced London architect, William Mountford. 

The opportunity to use the land to the west of the museum meant that the removal of old buildings at the junction of the old Shaw's Brow and Byrom Street could be completed and that William Brown Street could be terminated with a building befitting its civic grandeur. The design he proposed for the competition was realised with hardly any changes and is rather more Edwardian Imperial than Classical in style. Two main facades are used: on William Brown Street the roof level of the museum is maintained, interrupted only at each end by grand projecting bays, embellished by sculpture, and continues round to the broad, bowed elevation to Byrom Street. Here steps lead up to a central pedimented entrance door. The dual use was accommodated at two levels skilfully reflected in the exterior decoration. 

The Technical College was housed in the lower levels, which are rusticated and accessed through the Byrom Street door, whilst the new museum galleries lay behind the upper, where Ionic columns enliven the Byrom Street façade. 

Bomb damage meant some reconstruction of the roof of the Upper Horseshoe Gallery in the 1960s but the dignity of the top-lit vault is still clear. The Observatory Tower incorporated into the building, complete with domed roof with sliding panels, escaped damage and is still in use. 

The Wellington Memorial (1861-3) and The Steble Fountain (1877-79)
Grade II*
The site of the former Islington Market at the east end of William Brown Street, between the Walker Art Gallery and St George's Hall, was dignified by the introduction of two pieces of monumental public sculpture. To the east is the 40m Wellington Column, by Messrs. A. and G. A. Lawson of Glasgow. A fluted Doric column is surmounted by a bronze statue of the Iron Duke and stands on a pedestal incorporating records of his battles. 

To the west is the Steble Fountain by Paul Lienard, unveiled in 1879, a gift to Liverpool from Colonel R. F. Steble who was Mayor in 1874-5. The circular stone basin has a cast iron centrepiece with marine figures reclining beneath two smaller basins from which water tumbles out of a mermaid's shell and fish masks. The original fountain designed by Lienard was produced for the Paris Exposition of 1867. It was transported to America where it now stands in front of the Massachusetts State House, Boston Common, Boston, USA and is known as the Brewer Fountain. Other castings are to be found in Geneva, Lyon and Bordeaux. The Steble Fountain was cast by W. T. Allen & Co. of London.
Monuments in St George's PlateauAll monuments and structures described below are listed Grade II. 

Four recumbent stone lions, resting on individual plinths, mark the formal entrance from Lime Street onto the Plateau. They were designed in 1855 by C. R. Cockerell and carved by W. G. Nicholl. 

Public monuments continued to be added to the forum developing around St George's Hall. The equestrian statue of Prince Albert erected in 1866 after his death in 1861 was complemented in 1870 by a similar equestrian statue of Queen Victoria. Both are bronzes by Thomas Thornycroft. They are symmetrically placed on either side of the Hall's east portico. 

In 1883 a bronze statue of Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield, was added. The work of C. B. Birch, it now stands on the east portico of the Hall. Another bronze figure by Birch, Major-General Earle, native of Liverpool and leader of British Imperial campaigns in India and Africa was erected in 1887. 

Finally a austerely impressive memorial, the cenotaph by Lionel Budden, to the fallen of the First World War, a large rectangular block of stone with bronze relief panels of marching and mourning soldiers and civilians, was placed behind the Plateau's bronze lions and unveiled in 1930. 

St John's Gardens and Its Monuments
All monuments and structures described below are listed Grade II. From 1767 the Gardens directly to the west of what became the site of St George's Hall were a burial ground with a small mortuary chapel, but Liverpool's rapid urban expansion also required a church to be built here and St John's was completed in 1784. St George's Hall was sited so that there was very little space between it and the church (see above) but changes were envisaged here as elsewhere in this area. The churchyard was full and closed for burials in 1865, and in 1880, when the diocese of Liverpool was created, St John's was proposed as a possible location for a cathedral. The latter went elsewhere but, when St John's was closed in 1897 and subsequently demolished, sculptor George Frampton suggested the conversion of the churchyard to a garden for the display of public sculpture, an idea that was realised by the Corporation Surveyor, Thomas Shelmerdine. 

The Gardens slope westwards from St George's Hall towards Old Haymarket and the Mersey Tunnel entrance. They are bounded by a retaining wall, the work of Shelmerdine, in rusticated Darley Dale stone to match the Hall and incorporate entrance gates and steps to west and south. Also on the south side the wall includes public conveniences and here one may still see fragments of the Gardens' original Art Nouveau railings. Within, the Gardens are terraced and symmetrical. A further retaining wall runs across them between William Brown Street and St John's Lane forming an amphitheatre at its mid point; the main axial path continues west to Old Haymarket with planting beds and paths on either side. 

Within this are placed six monuments, bronze figures of the city's leading citizens and social reformers: Alexander Balfour, champion of destitute sailors and their families, (dated 1889) by A. Bruce Joy; William Rathbone, founder of the District Nursing movement and the universities of Liverpool and Wales, (dated 1899) by Frampton; Sir Arthur Bower Forwood, merchant, shipowner, Mayor and M.P., (erected 1903) by Frampton; William Ewart Gladstone, statesman and native of Liverpool, (dated 1904) by Sir Thomas Brock; Monsignor James Nugent, founder of boys schools and supporter of Irish and other poor emigrants who passed through Liverpool, (erected 1906) by F. W. Pomeroy; Canon T. Major Lester, founder of ragged schools and children's homes in Liverpool (erected 1907) by Frampton. 

A seventh larger monument by Sir W. Goscombe John to the King's Liverpool Regiment, dated 1905 and comprising Britannia on a stone pedestal above military figures and accoutrements, has become the forerunner of the number of commemorative military and other plaques more recently placed in the Gardens. 

Empire Theatre
1925
Grade II
The Empire Theatre by W. and T. R. Milburn was the last neo-classically styled façade added to the collection of buildings immediately around St George's Plateau. Though not publicly funded it does still have the public function for which it was created and behind the façade an audience of 2,450 can be seated in "Louis XVI" elegance. The long rows of seats sloping up at either end, which gave a heightened sense of audience participation, originally created an advanced example of theatre plan. 

Entrance to the Mersey Tunnel
1925 - 1934
Grade II
vSir Basil Mott and J. A. Brodie engineered the tunnel, over two miles long, under the River Mersey between Liverpool and Birkenhead but the entrances and associated ventilation shafts, prodigious structures in themselves, were designed by Herbert J. Rowse architect of several of the City's elegant inter-war office buildings. The large and dignified scale of the tunnel portal and its associated structures are by no means out of place in relation to the rest of the area. 

Rowse's distinctive stripped Classical style is best seen in the two lodges to left and right of the sweeping entrance retaining walls. These resemble triumphal arches with fluted columns whose bases, capitals and entablatures have been reduced to bass relief, which draw on stylised representations of the River Mersey. Wavy lines also occur as part of the cornice of the entrance retaining walls and above the tunnel opening. A shield over the portal itself includes a winged wheel and a pair of winged bulls, symbolising swift and heavy traffic. All are in white Portland stone. 

Four tollbooths were originally set in a half semi-circle around the tunnel entrance. These were arranged to allow vehicles to pause between them before entering the tunnel. The other half semi-circle was free of booths for exiting traffic, which would have already paid on the Birkenhead side. The tunnel no longer requires its tollbooths but one has been preserved, set aside from the reordered traffic routes, which now lead into the tunnel. It demonstrates Rowse's attention to detail: fluting and river, and speed motifs abound, the whole painted a fresh emerald green, the colour chosen for all metal structures associated with the Mersey Tunnel. 

The bronze statues, by Sir W. Goscombe John, of King George's V and Queen Mary, who opened the tunnel were repositioned one on either side of the retaining walls, their original location, facing Dale Street, having been obscured by a controversial modern fly-over.