3. City of Triumphant Liberalism, c1840-c1860

This chapter examines the start of the transformation of Manchester from an industrial town to a bourgeois city following its formal incorporation into a municipal borough in 1838. It begins by considering the impact of the railway system on the industrial, commercial and residential expansion of the city. This was a time of bourgeois optimism which was architecturally symbolised by Edward Walter’s Renaissance palazzo style Free Trade Hall. It is also a phase of urban zoning. The central business district becomes dominated by the architecture of commerce, with grand Renaissance-style cotton warehouses replacing residential housing. Beyond this core, municipal interventions in the form of by-law housing created solid working class townships of gridded, redbrick terraces, with the bourgeoisie moving further afield into fine suburban and semi-rural villas.