Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Peter cook Licence v1. British architect and inventor of the paternoster lift from Liverpool. From the mid-1840s he lived at 40 Falkner Square, a house which he designed and on which an English Heritage Blue Plaque is now sited.
Peter Ellis designed Oriel Chambers in 1864 at the corner of Water Street and Covent Garden in Liverpool, considered by many architectural historians to be one of the most influential buildings of its age, a precursor of the modernist style in architecture and one of the earliest attempts to break away from the classical tradition of commercial architecture. His other well-known commission was 16 Cook Street, Liverpool, of 1866. This building has been noted for its “surprisingly modern” spiral staircase, cantilevered out from the main building and clad with sheets of iron and glass. One of the properties became Peter and Mary’s first home, and it was whilst they were living there that Peter submitted designs for the 1839 St George’s Hall competition subsequently won by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes. Hardman Street Homoeopathic Dispensary, opened in 1860. 1863 that a fire destroyed offices and a warehouse at the junction of Water Street and Covent Garden.
The building was owned by Rev. Quentin Hughes suggested that it was possible that Peter’s career as an architect was adversely affected by criticism of Oriel Chambers, such as that which appeared in The Builder of 20 January 1866, where it was described as a “large agglommeration of protruding plate glass bubbles”, a “vast abortion” without any aesthetic qualities. The extent to which the Oriel Chambers criticism was of primary significance in influencing either Peter’s future career or interests remains unclear. Peter moved his office from Orange Court to Oriel Chambers in 1871, and it was there that he continued to practice as an architect, valuer, surveyor and civil engineer, with the Liverpool Mercury containing reports and advertisements concerning his work up to May 1884. Peter Ellis’s work may have influenced that of the American architect John Wellborn Root who came to Liverpool when 16 Cook Street was being constructed.
For example, in the Rookery Building, Chicago, Root used a glass and iron spiral staircase similar to that in 16 Cook Street. Quentin Hughes has suggested that Ellis’s career would have been very different if, like Root, he had gone to Chicago where his use of oriel windows to provide interior daylighting was adopted and exploited by American architects. Oriel Chambers, along with the work of Kahn, were real touchstones for the practice” of Arup Associates. Peter Ellis, of Liverpool, architect of Oriel Chambers and 16 Cook Street.
90, 91-94, and Architectural Forum vol. The introduction of structural iron and its consequences, Niggli publishers, 2010. Robert Ainsworth and Graham Jones, In the Footsteps of Peter Ellis. Architect of Oriel Chambers and 16 Cook Street, Liverpool, Liverpool History Society, 2013. It is from this book that the additions and corrections to the previous narrative have been derived. Hughes, Seaport, Bluecoat Press, 1993, pp. Reilly, Some Liverpool Streets and Buildings in 1921, Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, 1921, pp.