It has also seen a new building built behind the original listed facade and the restoration of the domed ceiling inthe Picton ReadingRoom, which was constructed in 1875.
Newcastle's arching Tyne Bridge, Liverpool's modernist Philharmonic Hall and the classical rotunda of Manchester's central library, which held 300 readers in what was then the country's biggest readingroom outside the British Library in London, were all products of the civic and, in some cases, philanthropic determination of local leaders.