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Then and now: Co-operative Permanent Building Society

Lever Street now

Our archive photograph, showing the Co-operative Permanent Building Society on the corner of Lever Street and Piccadilly Gardens, was taken in 1966.

But the Victorian architecture of the building, and the blinds over the premises of Dunn and Co hat makers, lend the picture an older feel. The only give-aways are the traffic signs and cars.

As it was with the building society and hatmakers

Building societies were a by-product of the Industrial Revolution which caused population migration into towns and cities.

They grew in the 1770s when workers began to form societies to save for land and materials to build houses of their own.

When first built, the Co-operative Permanent building would have looked out onto Piccadilly Gardens and the original Manchester Royal Infirmary - a voluntary hospital funded by subscribers and served by unpaid doctors.

The archive picture is part of a collection chronicling the changing face of Manchester during the last 250 years. The collection comprises of more than 77,000 images stored on an easy to use computer at Manchester's Central Library.

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