Oriel Chambers is a Grade 1 listed building in Liverpool that was built in 1864 from a design by Peter Ellis. It’s a particularly striking building and one of the first office buildings in the world to use an iron framed structure – possibly an inspiration for New York’s skyscrapers.
Ellis won a competition to design the building and ensured plenty of light inside by employing the grid of oriel windows (a bay window that projects usually from an upper floor that does not reach the ground), hence the name.
It wasn’t well received at first but now is considered to have been ahead of its time. It was damaged by wartime bombing in 1941 and refurbished in the late 1950s and again in 2008. It’s a really striking building – you can find more photos here.
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