Ultimately it would be through the invocation and implementation of this Civic Gospel that Birmingham would undergo its ‘civic renaissance’ under this new generation of business magnatescum-municipal reformers. It is significant that the architecture of this ‘new Jerusalem’ would be a consummation of Dawson’s Civic Gospel; Birmingham would become an expression of ‘Hebraism built with Hellenic bricks’.27 One need only observe the symbolic spaces manifested as part of Chamberlain’s ‘Improvement Scheme’ to appreciate the rhetorical and visual strategies employed to promote this message. Brewer’s Birmingham City Centre from Mason College Roof (Figure 1) speaks of a rebuilt Birmingham replete with civic monuments and splendid architectural developments. In the centre of his drawing stands Yeoville Thomason’s Council House (1874-9), the largest and grandest of all the architectural manifestations of the Civic Gospel. Figure 1. Brewer, H.W., Birmingham City Centre from Mason College Roof (1886), drawing, The Graphic / British Library Built as a complement to Joseph Chamberlain’s Improvement Scheme (1875), and as a permanent home for the town’s Council,28 the Council House dominates the city’s central Victoria Square (Figure 2). Figure 2. Council House. 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 5. Feb. 2017. At 150 feet long and 162 feet tall, complete with a Grand Dome and sumptuous portico relief, the Council House evokes a grandiose civic polis, reminding the observer instantly of Robert Dale’s invocation of ‘the glories of Florence’ and the opulent civic palaces of the Italian Renaissance.29 Although Thomason’s building is largely in the Corinthian order - rather than adopting, and completely answering, the tight classicism of the neighbouring Town Hall - the Council House is lavishly decorated in an Italianate or ornate Renaissance manner and is replete with big projections
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU1Nzc=