Editing Furness Style (section)

== Characteristics ==

Furness buildings announce themselves through bold, unconventional forms that command attention and resist easy absorption. Facades feature aggressive projections and recessions, creating dramatic shadow patterns and forcing visual engagement. Rooflines break into multiple levels and angles. Windows vary dramatically in size and shape, often combined in unexpected groupings. Materials—brick, stone, terra cotta, iron—appear in strong contrasts of color and texture. The overall effect is of buildings straining with barely contained energy, their components seeming to push against one another.<ref name="thomas"/>

Ornament in Furness buildings displays distinctive character: oversized, deeply carved, and often seemingly at war with the structures they decorate. Classical elements appear in distorted, muscular versions that challenge rather than reassure. Gothic tracery takes on organic, almost vegetable forms. Industrial motifs—gear-like rosettes, bolt-head ornaments—acknowledge the machine age. This ornament concentrates at entries and key visual points, creating focal areas of intense decoration against relatively plain expanses. The ornament's power derives from its suggestion of growth and force, as if natural or industrial energies had shaped the building's surface.<ref name="lewis"/>