Major buildings located on or adjacent to the street include the Arndale Centre, Exchange Square, The Printworks, Urbis (National Football Museum) and New Century House next to the CIS Tower.

[3] City Buildings was also the first home of The Clarion, the radical newspaper founded by Robert Blatchford which was first published on 12 December 1891, and which moved to Fleet Street in 1895.

[4] In the early 20th century, the scale of the architecture changed as the east side of Corporation Street attracted substantial broad based buildings.

It is symmetrical in design, with further full height pilasters and a large central entrance arch, topped with a mansard roof with dormer windows.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was blamed for both incidents, in which the devices were placed in soft furnishings during shopping hours.

[8] On the morning of 15 June 1996, at about 09:20, two men parked a van containing a 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) bomb on Corporation Street between Marks & Spencer and the Arndale.

About 80,000 people were cleared from the area by local police and store staff using procedures developed after another IRA bombing incident in 1992.

No fatalities resulted from the bomb, but over 200 people were injured, some seriously, mostly by flying glass and shrapnel; one pregnant shopper was thrown in the air by the blast.

[10] The reinsurance company Swiss Re estimated that the final insurance payout was over £400M, making it, at the time, the most expensive man-made disaster ever.

Marks and Spencer took the opportunity to acquire and demolish the adjacent Longridge House, using the enlarged site for the world's largest branch.

The landlord of the Corn Exchange invoked a force majeure condition in the lease to evict all tenants, and the building was converted into a shopping centre.

[19] The dome of the Royal Exchange, home to the theatre, was found to have shifted in the blast; its repair and refurbishment took two and a half years.

On 26 June 1996, Michael Heseltine, the then Deputy Prime Minister, announced an international competition for designs of the redevelopment of the bomb-affected area.

[24] In 2010, Manchester City Council proposed a 120 m (394 ft) wheel, to be operated by World Tourist Attractions, as a replacement for the existing transportable installation, with Piccadilly Gardens the possible site and completion expected by Christmas 2011.

The bollards surrounding Corporation Street have gained a bad reputation in the media with CCTV footage showing cars colliding with them.