Background
Born Novogrudok, Belarus, then part of Russia, his Jewish family were named Schimschlavitch, his father a cotton merchant.
Born Novogrudok, Belarus, then part of Russia, his Jewish family were named Schimschlavitch, his father a cotton merchant.
Sunlight was apprenticed to an architect in Manchester in 1904 and by 1907 had his own practice in Street Ann"s Square.
In later life, Sunlight enjoyed to "dine out" on tales of his family"s adventures and brushes with the Tsarist authorities but it is suspected that these were largely fanciful. The family emigrated to England in 1890 to avoid conscription and settled in Manchester, probably choosing their new name from Portuguese Sunlight. Reputedly, by 1910, he had designed and built more than 1000 houses in Prestwich and claimed that by 1921 he had created more than one million pounds" worth of property.
He also designed and built factories and warehouses but his greatest memorial is Sunlight House (1932).
In 1949, he proposed a 40-storey extension but it was rejected by the city council. His sole religious building was the technically innovative South Manchester Synagogue (1913).
Though the bill survived by a single vote, it was lost when Sunlight was defeated in the United Kingdom general election, 1924.
33rd United Kingdom Parliament]
Sunlight was elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury in the 1923 general election and introduced a Private Member"s Bill on the standardisation of bricks.