Sitting alongside the Central Library, the Tiled Hall was one of the splendours of Victorian Leeds. Dubbed the 'Municipal Palace', its grand architecture is a testament to Victorian civic pride

The Municipal Buildings were opened on 17th April 1884 by the Mayor Alderman Edwin Woodhouse. This followed a competition to design the new buildings won by George Corson.

The building was divided into the ‘business’ side which fronted onto Calverley Street and the ‘popular’ side which fronted onto Centenary Street now the Headrow. The popular side was occupied by the Free Public Library and took up less than a third of the whole building.

This consisted of a reading room, lending library and reference library. The reading room was sited in the Tiled Hall at the front of the building. The Yorkshireman described the reading room on opening as ‘a magnificent place. The floor is the finest parquetry in oak, walnut and ebony..’ The roof was so magnificent it was feared that ‘people will be continually gazing up at it, instead of quietly reading the magazines and newspapers.’

The original reading room or Tiled Hall at the front of the building is 80 ft x 40ft. It is divided into a nave and aisles by arches supported by granite pillars. The tiled walls have medallion portraits in relief of Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Burns, Scott, Horace and Macaulay. The vaulted ceiling is covered in mosaic with hexagonal bricks of various colours with golden bosses. These ceiling bosses were part of the Victorian ventilation system.

When the Art Gallery was erected in 1888, the Tiled Hall formerly the Reading room, was then converted to a sculpture gallery and the Reading room was transferred to the Art Gallery and renamed the News Room.

In 1955 the Commercial and Technical Library moved into the Tiled Hall. The library was then able to expand and have both a lending and a reference collection. A gallery for staff use was also created where further book stock was shelved and work space was created for the typists from the cataloguing department. The ceiling and walls of the Tiled Hall were then hidden for nearly fifty years behind a false ceiling, bookcases and panelling.

In 1999 when the Central Library building closed for refurbishment and rewiring, the 1950s panelling and bookcases were removed along with the false ceiling to once more reveal the Tiled Hall and the inevitable damage caused by the work done in the 1950s. The present restoration work has now fully restored the Tiled Hall to its original magnificence and is now home to a shop and stylish café.