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It had originally been two private houses. The one abutted upon
the footway, and the other stood some thirty feet back, a pretty garden
being in the front. The latter had been occupied by Mr. James Busby,
who carried on the business of a wire-worker at the rear. The ground
floor frontages of both had been taken out. A roof had been placed over
the garden, two hideous small-framed bay windows fronted New Street, and
a third faced what is now "Warwick House Passage." The whole place had a
curious "pig-with-one-ear" kind of aspect, the portion which had been
the garden having no upper floors, while the other was three storeys
high. The premises had been "converted" by a now long-forgotten
association, called the "Drapery Company," and as this had not been
successful, Mr. Holliday and his then partner, Mr. Merrett, had become
its successors. It was in 1839 that the first portion of the present
palatial building was erected.
A few doors from this was the office of _The Birmingham Journal_, a very
different paper then from what it afterwards became.


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