STOREY INSTITUTE
The Storey Institute, Meeting House Lane and Castle Hill in Lancaster, Lancashire was constructed between 1887 and 1891 as a replacement for the Lancaster Mechanic's Institute, to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee and the opening art exhibition was held in 1889. It was paid for by Thomas Storey, a local businessman who had been mayor in the year of the Jubilee and was renamed the Storey Institute in his honour in 1891. Its purpose was for the promotion of art, science, literature, and technical instruction and contained a reading room, a library, a lecture room, a laboratory, a music room, a picture gallery, a school of art and in 1906–1908 it was extended to commemorate the accession of Edward VII. Thomas Storey's son, Herbert, paid £10,000 towards the cost of the extension, which almost doubled the size of the building. Over the years, the building has housed the City Art Gallery, the public library, a girls’ grammar school, and from the 1950s to 1982, Lancaster College of Art. The art collection was moved in 1968 to Lancaster City Museum but by the 1980s the gallery was rarely used, when in 1991 a group of local artists re-established it as the Storey Gallery and delivered a programme of over one hundred exhibitions of contemporary art until 2013. In the early 21st century the institute was converted into a multi-use building by Lancaster City Council and renamed The Storey at Meeting House Lane, Lancaster.