with consultees including Joseph Paxton, the designer of The Crystal Palace. The report's recommendation identified a site for the hall on what was then Park Lane (since redeveloped into the Headrow) which contained Park House and its gardens. This site was on the edge of the town centre of the time, but the project required a large parcel of land that was unavailable in the congested central streets. It was purchased from a wealthy merchant named John Blayds for the sum of £9,500 (). The scheme did not secure universal backing immediately; a council motion in February 1852 proposed it was "unwise and inexpedient to proceed with the Hall". This, and other motions to limit its costs, were defeated by small majorities, but they demonstrated that financial prudence was a strong compulsion for some Victorian local politicians, who disliked incurring civic expense without genuine proof of public advantage. These happened to be in a minority in Leeds, which in the same year backed other large projects such as installing sewers for the city. Support among the public and interest groups also helped – the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society was in strong support of the hall, as was the recently formed Leeds Improvement Society (despite its doubts on the council's competence to deliver it). Heaton, its secretary, reminded dissatisfied ratepayers throughout the decade that the Town Hall was important if the city were to discard its image of being an architectural backwater with few buildings of merit. Design Leeds Town Council tendered for designs from architects in 1852, in an open competition, a common method of selecting architects for important buildings in the 19th century. The brief was for a kind of building that did not yet exist in England, combining under one roof the functions of moot halls, concert rooms, and courthouses, along with municipal offices and a suite of reception rooms for the mayor. Even the monumental edifice of St George's Hall, Liverpool, only contained a public hall, a small concert hall, and assize courts. The ambitious brief also asked for space for 8,000 people, but the relatively modest budget attracted ridicule, and costs did indeed rise throughout the project. The "Instructions to Architects" made no prescription about which style the design should use, the use of the prevalent Neoclassical style being the unwritten assumption. Sir Charles Barry, at the time still occupied rebuilding the Palace of Westminster,