Know Before You Go
Above a pub called The Bank. Entrance via the buzzer-controlled side door around the corner to the right of the classical columns.
Manchester, England
Portico Library and Gallery
A 19th-century time capsule of travel, fiction, and historic texts still available to the public.
The neoclassical gem that is Manchester’s Portico Library collection began simply enough. Surgeon Michael Ward and his friend Robert Robinson were chatting one day around the year 1796 and felt inspired to solve the city’s lack of just such an institution. What resulted from their conversation became the present-day library and gallery, open since 1806, which continues to house their original 19th-century texts.
Though renowned primarily for its wide selection of travel literature, biographies, and historical texts from this period, what helps distinguish the Portico from its peer institutions is the unusually fine selection of fiction, including a number of first editions. Alongside Dickens, Bulwer Lytton, Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell stand many lesser known authors who continue to emerge today as important subjects of study.
Housed in a building designed by Thomas Harrison, the architect renowned for his use of the classical revival style on the Liverpool Lyceum, the Portico’s nearly 25,000 tomes provide a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of the city of Manchester as it entered and transformed throughout England’s industrial age.
The rarest of these books reside within in a luxe reading room fit for the era from which it hails. Sadly (but for the super reasonable sake of historic preservation), this tiny, sit-able time capsule is reserved for library members only, though the rest of the library’s collection is freely accessed to all curious parties during open hours of operation.
Contributed by
paulypaul
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