The Rex

Hotel Gotham opened in April 2015 inside a Grade II-listed 1935 Midland Bank building on King Street, designed by Edwin Lutyens and never previously used as a hotel. The independent 60-room property became the original of the Gotham Collection, since followed by sister hotels in Newcastle and Bristol, built around a maximalist, banking-themed interior by squid.inc.

The place

The hotel occupies the top of King Street, Manchester's most architecturally dense stretch of banking-era buildings, in the heart of the city centre's retail and business core. The address puts Hotel Gotham's rooftop terrace among the more prominent vantage points over the city, just as the building's original occupant intended it to signal financial permanence rather than hospitality.

The concept

The building opened in 1935 as a Midland Bank branch, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in a neoclassical, Art Deco-inflected style, and never operated as a hotel until this conversion. Marshall Construction Group and Bespoke restored the Grade II-listed structure, while designer Oliver Redfern of squid.inc led a deliberately theatrical interior scheme that plays on the building's banking past — vault doors, ledger motifs, a nod to old-money Manchester rendered with camp, maximalist flourish. It reopened in April 2015 as Hotel Gotham, a 60-room independent property spread across seven floors, and later became the original of what is now the Gotham Collection alongside sister hotels in Newcastle and (upcoming) Bristol.

Dining & wellness

Honey, the seventh-floor restaurant, holds two AA Rosettes and serves afternoon tea with panoramic city views. Brass, a private-members bar on the upper floors, mixes cocktails from sun terraces overlooking King Street. The hotel underwent an exterior restoration in the mid-2020s, part of ongoing upkeep of the listed facade rather than a full closure.