5: Hutchinson's Buildings
Hutchinson's Buildings is across the street behind you. It's the building with the domed corner housing two clock faces.
Originally this was the site of a large house owned by Dr William Clanny. In 1850, the shipbuilder Ralph Hutchinson hired the architect George Middlemiss to construct Sunderland's first purpose-built shops which sought to bring commercial fashion to mid-19th century Sunderland.
The ground floor's corner shop is widely known throughout Sunderland as Mackie's Corner. The name refers the shop's first tenant, Robert Mackie. Mackie owned a hat shop where passers-by watched his employees make silk top hats from the large corner window while waiting for friends. Mackie's Corner quickly became a popular meeting place for the town's residents.
On a summer night in 1898 the 'Great Fire' of Sunderland destroyed the eastern part of the building. Mackie's Corner and its interiors miraculously survived. The rest of Hutchinson's Buildings was rebuilt in a similar style to Middlemiss' design but with offices above the shops instead of domestic accommodation; a hallway clad in ceramic tiles and a grand neo-Jacobean wooden staircase can be found inside the building.
For over a century and a half Hutchinson's Buildings housed a number of noteworthy tenants.
Alexander Corder had his drapery shop here until he moved to a bigger shop on Fawcett Street (see Corder House).
The North-Eastern Railway Company rented rooms here until 1914 and the building served as the local Recruiting Office for the army during the First World War.
In the early 20th century Royal Photographer A and G Taylor had a studio here and the well-known shoe brand, Manfield and Sons, occupied Mackie's Corner well into the 1960s.
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