which burst out near the corners with columns in antis and large segmental pediments. As Tristram Hunt has suggested, the building stands as ‘a nineteenth-century Venetian palace with Victoria Square acting as St. Mark’s... a bricks-and-mortar memorial to the municipal gospel’.30 Elevated in a large niche in the central portico is a mosaic depicting Municipality enthroned in the centre and receiving the classically attired allegories of Science, Art, Liberty, Law, Commerce and Industry (Figure 3). Above the portico is the central pediment (Figure 4) which further reinforces the importance of the city, this time placing it directly in relation to the nation personified as Britannia, whose arms are outstretched to reward the manufacturers of Birmingham with laurel wreaths. In 1881 the Council House was extended to include the City Museum and Art Gallery, on one corner stands the ‘Big Brum’ tower, a ‘doughty Venetian challenger (modelled on San Marco)’ to Westminster’s Big Ben and a symbol of secular civic pride.31 Notably this extension was built on top of the offices of the municipal Gas Department, the proceeds from which had gone towards subsidising the £40,000 outlay from the council to build it and circumvented tight restrictions of the Public Libraries Act of 1850 which limited the use of public funds on arts.32 This was a clear indication of the municipality as patria, with the very purpose and fabric of the building evoking Dawson’s earlier call for the city to play the leading role in elevating the artistic, aesthetic and moral sensibilities of its denizens. Yeoville Thomason’s building is one which reinforces the dignity of municipal office whilst reminding the observer of the lofty and the exalted responsibilities of those tasked with executing and fulfilling the Civic Gospel. This civic responsibility is enmeshed within the architectural order of the building; the viewer cannot help but perceive that Britannia herself is supported not only by the physical architecture of the building but by the work of those that occupy it.
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