Art DECO

Art Deco is a style of visual arts, architecture and design that first appeared in France just before World War 1. The style spread across Europe and Britain, where it became a favourite for building types associated with the modern age: garages, airports, cinemas, swimming pools, office buildings, department stores, power stations and factories. There were overlaps with the International Modernist Style, with the use of clean lines and minimal decoration, but the style also lent itself well to buildings associated with entertainment, providing glamorous interiors for hotels, restaurants and luxury apartments.

ChaRles Rowan House, Clerkenwell WC1X

Designed in the expressionist style in 1928-30 by G Mackenzie Trench, architect and surveyor for the Metropolitan Police Authority, these former flats for married police officers, now council flats, sit on a steeply sloping site.

The powerful, rhythmic street elevations with bays articulated by full-height moulded brick stacks are treated as pilasters that create a strong skyline and demarcate breaks in the roofline where the blocks step up the hill.

Grade II listed.

**Charles Rowan House, Wilmington Street, Clerkenwell, London WC1X 0EH**

The Daily Express Building,

City of London EC4A

A prominent example of the art deco. The former newspaper headquarters features a black façade with rounded corners in vitrolite and clear glass with chromium strips. giving a streamline moderne style.

Designed in 1932 by Ellis and Clark, now grade 2* listed.

**The Daily Express Building, 120 Fleet Street, City of London, EC4A 2BE**

Daimler Car hire Garage, Bloomsbury

Designed by Wallis, Gilbert & Partners in the Streamline Moderne (or Art Deco) style for Daimler Car Hire Limited, who provided a luxury chauffeur-driven limousine-hire-service from Knightsbridge in London.

Built in 1931, it has since been converted into office space but is now Grade 2 listed.

To the right was the garage’s main entrance with a sweeping spiral ramp provided parking access to the upper storey for the Daimler fleet. The ramp is expressed externally and emphasised by Crittall metal framed windows which follow the rake of the ramp through three storeys.

**The Daimler Garage Car Hire, 7 Herbrand Street, London, WC1N 1EX**

THe Hoover FACTORY Building, PERIVALE UB6

Designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners and opened in 1933, this Grade II* listed building was once the UK headquarters, manufacturing plant and repairs centre for the Hoover Company.

It is very much in the Art Deco style. The ambitious design took on a grand, palatial facade of huge columns and recessed glass bay windows, with window curves derived from Erich Mendelsohn’s work in Germany and splashes of primary colour and patterning from the Aztec and Mayan fashion at the 1925 Paris Exhibition.

It sits as a significant arterial road factory landmark by the main A40 into / out of London.

**The Hoover Factory Building, Western Avenue, Perivale, Middlesex, UB6 8DW**

LYTTON CLOSE, HAMPSTEAD GARDEN SUBURB, LONDON N2

Part of the Hampstead Garden Suburb, Lytton Close is an enclave of art deco houses designed and built around 1935, all to designs of architect G.G. Winbourne and constructed by W.L.M. Estates.

With flat roofs, glazed rooftop pavilions and balconies, the design is eclectic, confident and eschews the compromises found elsewhere in the Suburb in Moderne-style houses.

Now grade II-listed for their architectural significance.

**Lytton Close, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London N2 0RH**

SOUTHERN PAVILION, WORTHING PIER, West Sussex BN11

Art Deco ‘streamline-style’ Pavilion at the end of the pier, designed by the Borough Architect and opened in 1935.

**Southern Pavilion, Worthing Pier, Marine Parade, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 3PX**

BROMLEY PICTURE HOUSE BROMLEY BR1

A 1936 Art Deco cinema, designed by architect George Coles. The cinema underwent a major refurbishment and extension in 2019.

**Bromley Picturehouse, 242 High Street, Bromley BR1 1PQ**

Florin Court, SMithField, London EC1m

An Art Deco residential building on the eastern side of Charterhouse Square, with wide window bands and corners curving into a recessed entrance to achieve a streamlined style.

The exterior was used as the fictional London residence of Agatha Christie’s character, Hercule Poirot.

Built in 1936 by Guy Morgan and Partners and is now grade II listed.

**Florin Court, 6-9 Charterhouse Square, London EC1M 6EU**

K6 Telephone Box - "The Jubilee Box"

The K6 (short for Kiosk No. 6) was designed in 1935 by architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

It was a more refined version of an earlier K2 kiosk also designed by Scott in 1924, in which the K6 was simplified and streamlined. The windows give a more horizontal appearance in keeping with the “moderne’ aesthetics of the 1930s.

Undoubtedly a British icon.

**A pair of K6 telephone boxes - corner of Marylebone Road and Allsop Place, London NW1**

Rayners Lane Station, Harrow HA5

Built in 1938 to designs by architect Reginald Uren that followed London Transport’s ‘house style’ developed by Charles Holden.

The station features the double height cube-shaped red brick and glass ticket hall, capped with a flat reinforced concrete lid roof.

The main entrances are set behind two projecting curved corner kiosks at street level. Above each of the kiosks is a large, pole-mounted 'Underground' roundel.

**Rayners Lane Station, Alexandra Avenue, Harrow HA5 5EG**

Neva road, Weston-super-mare

A speculative Art Deco / Modernist residential development originally forming part of the ‘Ellenborough Estate’, designed by local architects Leete & Darby in 1934.

It comprises of a collection of 8 pairs of semi-detached houses, two detached houses, a pair of semi-detached and one detached bungalows built around 1935.

This series illustrates three neighbouring properties, highlighting the changes made in the course of time and the restoration of one, back to its former glory.

**Neva Road, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset**

VICeroy court, St John’s wood NW8

Viceroy Court overlooks views of Regents Park and the London skyline beyond. Containing 84 luxury flats, it was built between in 1934–36 to designs by the architectural firm Marshall and Tweedy.

The semi-circular windows on the end of the building form a cantilevered alcove in each main living rooms above the ground floor.

**Viceroy Court, 58-74 Prince Albert Road, St. John's Wood, London, NW8 7PR**

MEAKIN ESTATE, BERMONDSEY SE1

Built in 1935 for the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey.

**Meakin Estate, Rothsay Street, Bermondsey, London SE1 4QN**

Chelsea, London SW3

A 1930’s art deco facade set within a well maintained 1860’s stuccoed row of terraces, on a narrow cut-de-sac off the Kings Road.

RYE LANE, PECKHAM SE15

Rye Lane developed into one of South London's major shopping destinations during the early part of the twentieth century.

This department store was originally called ’Holdrons’ and undoubtedly would have made an eye catching and progressive architectural statement with its magnificent art deco frontage. It is now occupied by Khan’s Bargain Limited, selling everything and anything that might be useful to the local community.

**Khan’s Bargain Limited, Rye Lane, SE15**

**78A Rye Lane, Peckham, London SE15 4RY**

MUNDANIA COURT, PECKHAM RYE SE22

Mundania Court, a large art deco block of flats at the corner of Forest Hill Road and Mundania Road.

Although more streamlined than some more decorative Art Deco buildings, it has distinguishing characteristics that hark back to the 1930s movement: long horizontal lines, a smooth surface, curved Crittall windows a clean symmetrical design. The building’s architect and date of construction is unknown.

**Mundania Court, 43 Forest Hill Road, London SE22 0NQ**

Guthrie Clinic, King’s College Hospital SE5

In 1937 the private Guthrie wing was established with a donation from the Stock Exchange Dramatic and Operatic Society for wealthier patients to enjoy less crowded wards.

Designed by Colcutt and Hamp, the brick tower was described by Pevsner as ‘mannered, with neo-Georgian and Cinema elements .’

**Guthrie Clinic, King’s College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London SE5 9RS**

RUSKIN PARK HOUSE, DENMARK HILL SE5

Designed by Watkins Grey Architects around 1936-7, Ruskin Park House comprises of 241 flats in two blocks facing each other across a well tended garden, with a third smaller block designed later outside this composition.

Whilst it is a later. more restrained example of the art deco style, the blocks demonstrate some typical deco features, with some sweeping bay windows and lintels which give a classic streamline horizontal appearance. whilst still retaining the Crittall windows.

**Ruskin Park House, Champion Hill, London SE5 8TH**

TULSE HILL, London SW2

An art deco semi-detached property built for the family of a wealthy businessman in 1929.

It still demonstrates the clean lines and minimal decoration of the style including original Crittall windows

102 Minnis Road,

Birchington-on-Sea

A unique Art Deco house built in 1935 on the north Kent coast. The house has been recently fully renovated both externally and internally by the owners who now run it as a bed and breakfast .

**102 Minnis Road, Birchington, Kent CT7 9NX**

The SHillING HOUSE,

NEWCASTLe upon TYNE, NE4

The Shilling House was built in 1925 as a demonstration house for the Newcastle Daily Chronicle to illustrate the latest techniques in building with reinforced concrete. However, it was donated by the proprietors of the newspaper as the first prize to raise money for the Disaster Fund for the Montagu Pit Disaster. The winner had to guess how many people used the Newcastle Tramways on 30 May 1925. The cost of entry to the competition was one shilling (5p) - hence the name. It was won by a Mrs Margaret Haye.

I’ve illustrated the rear of this house, with its terraced garden begun by the current owner in 1996 and which is still evolving. It is a calm green space characterised by its structural form, with clipped hedging and topiary creating a verdant framework, strongly related to the distinctive deco architecture of the house.

**The Shilling House, West Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4**

Dorchester Court, Herne Hill, SE24

A development of 96 flats in eight blocks around a central landscaped courtyard, built in 1933-4 for Mr Morrell, a local builder and developer.

It is a classic example of art deco architecture designed by Leslie H Kemp and Frederick E Tasker, famous for their art deco cinemas throughout the UK.

As a complete and little altered development of moderne-style flats, the ensemble remains exceptionally well detailed, although there are now structural problems with the balconies and general external deterioration evident within the courtyard blocks behind.

**Dorchester Court, Herne Hill, London SE24 9QY**

**Dorchester Court, Herne Hill, London SE24 9QX**