Picton Reading Room and Hornby Library

1875 - 9 and 1906
Grade II*
http://www.civichalls.liverpool.gov.uk/centrallibrary/index.asp

Before returning to work on the extension to the Walker Art Gallery, Sherlock designed and built the Museum and Library extension known as the Picton Reading Room after Sir James Picton, chairman of the Libraries and Museums Committee who laid its foundation stone. 

The semi-circular façade ingeniously disguises the change in direction and ground level of William Brown Street at this point and ensures the uninterrupted flow of the classical streetscape. 

The drum-like exterior, surrounded by detached Corinthian columns and surmounted by a rich entablature, balustrade and domed roof, was intended to echo Greek and Roman temples and to function internally like the British Museum Reading Room. 

Unfortunately in the minds of Victorian Liverpudlians it suggested a more prosaic structure and became known as Picton's Gasometer. 

In 1906 a further library extension, still in the classical mode, the Hornby Library by Corporation Surveyor Thomas Shelmerdine, was added to the rear.