King Street sits amongst Manchester’s most glamorous places to visit and, as the name suggests, is one of its most majestic.
Long established as the City’s premium shopping destination, foodies and fashionistas who flock here find themselves amidst a unique and eclectic community of retail and leisure all set against a backdrop of rich history and inspiring architecture.
The combination of 18th and 19th century buildings provide the perfect backdrop for filmmakers from around the world, and it’s why we are delighted to feature the area as our February Location of the Month.
The street’s history goes back to 1772 and the construction of Manchester’s original civic house. This later became the site of Manchester’s first Town Hall. Then, as the city evolved, King Street became the financial district which gave us some of the iconic buildings still standing today, many of which we have used as locations across a raft of film and TV hits.
These include the Lloyds TSB building by architect Charles Heathcote at Number 53, Alfred Waterhouse’s Prudential Assurance Offices at 76-80, the Manchester Reform Club created by Edward Salomons at 81 and at 82 the former Bank of England Manchester branch, by C.R. Cockerell. One of the most iconic edifices sits at the top of the street on Spring Gardens – now the popular Gotham Hotel and Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat. This stunning monument to art deco began life as Manchester’s Midland Bank. Other popular locations around King Street include Grand Pacific, Browns Manchester, Fight Club, Chancery Place. They have lent interior and exterior views to many dramatic moments.
In the days before film and TV became a part of everyday life and movie stars were an invention of the future, these great architects and the good people of Manchester would never have suspected that further great achievements and broadcasting monuments would inhabit the street and its buildings but this of course happened.
In recent years King Street has played host to stars and film crews making some of the most iconic movies and television which are then streamed across the globe.
Peaky Blinders shot the exterior of the Gotham as the double for a Boston Hotel and another star who landed in King Street was Jude Law who starred in 2016 movie, Genius, which told the story of renowned editor Maxwell Perkins as played by Colin Firth. More recently Stephen Graham appeared in drama series Boiling Point and science fiction odyssey Intergalactic shot interiors in Grand Pacific.
The role call of honour continues with titles such as The Feed, The Stranger and Everything I Know About Love. It is safe to say that most TV and movie fans will have, at some point in time, without even knowing it, taken a trip along King Street Manchester, a place we love to work and take pride in opening to the world of production.
