Birmingham Town Hall

The building was created as a home for the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival established in 1784, the purpose of which was to raise funds for the General Hospital, after St Philip's Church (later to become a cathedral) became too small to hold the festival, and for public meetings. Two sites were considered by the Birmingham Street Commissioners for the construction of a concert hall in the city; Bennetts Hill and the more expensive Paradise Street site. The latter was chosen and a design competition was launched which resulted with the submission of 67 designs including one by Charles Barry, whose design for the King Edward's School on New Street was then under construction. Joseph…

The hall takes the form of a free-standing Corinthian temple, with 14 bays running north to south and 8 bays east to west. It is closely modelled on the Temple of Castor and Pollux in Rome and reproduces its predecessor's most distinctive feature – its tall podium – in rusticated stone. The building's columns are topped with capitals featuring Acanthus leaves in a distinctive interlocking spiral design, above which the simplified entablature features a plain architrave and dentil cornice. Behind the colonnade the cella containing the Great Hall features tall windows capped with eared architraves. At the south end of the podium there is an arcade two bays deep, glazed in to form a vestibule…