St Johns precinct - a photo on Flickriver

St Johns precinct

            The Port City of Liverpool has seen a number of large scale building and engineering projects in its time - the docks, Lime Street station & Edge Hill railway cuttings, St Georges Hall, two Mersey tunnels, Speke airport, Otterspool riverside promenade, etc. This one, St Johns precinct in the heart of the city, dates from the late 1960s and is now approaching 50 years in existence. 

It replaced a network of streets which contained a variety of small shops, pubs and the old Victorian market buildings.  Of course not everyone appreciated that some quaint old buildings were lost but St. Johns was an immediate success and continues to be so.  In architectural terms the modernist lines and brutal massing of the major built forms making up the whole composition made little or no reference to what had gone before.  In compensation the new precinct had the advantages of a common power plant and waste disposal facilities with wide, well lit interior shopping malls and toilet amenities for the shoppers. It also had a multi-storey car park, a new modern hotel, some new pubs and a  new night club venue (the Top Rank suite).

The scale of St Johns precinct remains impressive, though it is difficult to find an aesthetically pleasing view/prospect of it in my opinion.  Having had a good walk around it I think that this is possibly its best "side".   From here (standing by the Crown pub in Skelhorne Street) the principal building blocks are in powerful juxtaposition, creating a striking geometric composition which adds height and drama to the City centre roofline.

(architect : James Roberts)

Photograph and text COPYRIGHT © Towner Images

Taken on: November 29, 2017

Tags:

Liverpool

shopping

Towner

modernist

concrete

architecture

brutal

Merseyside

building

St Johns

multi-storey car park

James Roberts

Jim Roberts

Top Rank Suite

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