It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find a modern city skyline that does not feature many buildings that have glass curtain walling, and there is no sign that the sleek, shimmering mirrors of the sky are going away anytime soon.

The building that is credited with popularising and starting the trend is most likely the United Nations Secretariat Building as designed by Le Corbusier.

However, nearly a century before this, a pioneering soothsayer of an architect by the name of Peter Ellis developed the curtain wall style at a time when large plate glass windows were only just becoming technically possible.

The first of these, Oriel Chambers in Liverpool, was built in 1964 after winning the commission in a competition and created on the same principle that had defined curtain walling’s use today; it maximised the amount of light that could enter the building and reduced the reliance on gas lamps.

It was a building that was way ahead of its time. If anything, some thought it was too far ahead of its time; the architectural journal The Builder was infamously savage, describing it as an “agglomeration” and a “vast abortion” that was both “depressing” and “ludicrous”.

With the benefit of hindsight, the only ludicrous part of Oriel Chambers was that it would be considered as such, but it may have tragically impacted his career, with only one other well-known building that he was a part of.

An evolution of the curtain wall style of Oriel Chambers, 16 Cook Street is a remarkably modern-looking building for 1866 and received a similarly mixed reaction as a result.

He continued to work as an architect for 18 more years, but he would increasingly focus more on his role as a civil engineer, inventing the paternoster lift and patenting various other inventions as well.
His work was extremely influential on skyscraper design, to the point that some historians have noted that had he moved to Chicago he would have been at the forefront of what became the Chicago School style.