Pier Head

[3][4] As well as a collection of landmark buildings, recreational open space, and a number of memorials, the Pier Head was (and for some traffic still is) the landing site for passenger ships travelling to and from the city.

[5] Despite some protests in national architectural journals about the exclusion of architects from beyond Liverpool, the local firm of Briggs, Wolstenholme, Hobbs and Thornley was appointed.

A neo-baroque design was approved, with a central dome added at the last minute before the final plans were adopted in time for the start of building work in March 1903.

The following year, the Royal Liver Friendly Society made an approach through Walter Aubrey Thomas, a local architect, successfully offering considerably less for a site than the corporation had hoped for: £70,000 instead of £95,000.

[5] Gladstone and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board expressed consternation at the height of the Royal Liver Society's proposed new headquarters, sometimes described as "England's first skyscraper",[5] but after much debate the corporation approved the plans.

The Cunard Building was built of reinforced concrete, clad in Portland Stone, in a style intended to recall grand Italian palaces, described by the architectural historian Peter De Figueiredo as "a match for its more ostentatious neighbours in expressive power but greatly superior in refinement of detail and proportion.

"[5] In 2002, the Pier Head, and the adjacent Mann Island, were subjected to an ill-fated development scheme known as the "Fourth Grace" project.

It links the 127 mi (204 km) of the existing canal to the city's South Docks, passing the Pier Head and its landmark buildings.

After further lengthening took place in the early twentieth century, the combined structure originally measured 2,478 feet, almost half a mile.

Only a few months after a new stage (to replace the previous combined structure) was opened on 13 July 1975, it had to be refloated, after sinking in freak weather.

[9][page needed] Similar conditions, and an extremely low tide on 2 March 2006, caused it to sink again, probably because one of its girder's air pockets ruptured, and it could not be refloated.

In 2013, memorials were unveiled to the Second World War convoy escort group commander Captain Johnnie Walker and to the RMS Lancastria.