The Liverpool Royal Institution was a learned society set up in 1814 for "the Promotion of Literature, Science and the Arts". William Corrie, William Rathbone IV, Thomas Stewart Traill and William Roscoe were among the founders. It was sometimes called the Royal Society of Liverpool.
A royal charter was granted in 1821. The institute purchased a building on Colquitt Street where a lecture program was started. It also included an art gallery which hosted John James Audubon's first European exhibition, in 1826. A new building to host the gallery was built in 1841 and its director was William John Swainson. A grammar school for boys, the Royal Institution School, ran until 1892.
The house was built for the slave trader Thomas Parr. Parr sold his house to the institution and was one of its founder members.[1] Many of the people who set up the institution were former slave traders.[2][3]
