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Original Text (Annotation: EPW043169 / 2167555)
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Leeds Mechanics' Institution for Science Art and Literature. In 1825, four years after the Edinburgh School of Arts opened (considered to be the first Mechanics' Institute), the Leeds Mechanics' Institute was set up in a house in Park Row. The building in this photograph was the Institute's third home. “At the start of the 1860s, the architect Cuthbert Brodrick, who also designed the nearby Town Hall, was commissioned to design a new building in Cookridge Street (now Millennium Square), which took five years to build and cost £20,000… At the centre of this French Second Empire style building was a lecture hall seating 1,500 people, with a balcony supported on cast iron columns. Around this were arranged on two floors the library, reading room, classrooms, laboratory, art studio and various other facilities, including a dining room. The Institute became Leeds College of Art in 1903 and the interior has been much altered through the 20th century, with the lecture hall used as a theatre. It is listed Grade II* and now houses the city’s museum, with the central circular lecture theatre converted into exhibition space.” (Historic England 2017 p 7-8) '