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In a not so distant past the rich and famous would gift their towns and cities with beautiful buildings to last generations. Here is the John Rylands Library in Manchester, opened in 1900, a Neo-gothic sandstone construction on a brick base with a steel frame. 
The central hall and reading room is elevated 30ft above street level, to provide as much light as possible to the library located in the middle of a busy city.
The sandstone was quarried in Cumbria, but the wooden details and interiors were imported Polish oak.
The cost of the library was 230 000 pounds, about 28 million pounds today. The level of detail in decoration and carving, the quality of the materials, incredible. It also had the first electric lightning of a public building in Manchester, and its own generator (until 1950).
The level of craftsmanship is very high. The building project must have employed the best carvers of wood and stone in the city for years.
