39-73, Graham Park Road, with projecting walls, steps and garages

Block of 18 council flats, some now privately owned, located on Graham Park Road with projecting walls, steps and garages. Designed in 1948-9 and built in 1951-2 by Clifford Wyld, District Surveyor, for Gosforth Urban District Council.

The building is constructed of buff brick with concrete dressings and pantiled roofs. The flats are arranged in an L-shaped plan, with 15 flats facing Graham Park Road and three facing the Great North Road, a configuration that shields the rear gardens from traffic noise. The flats are organised in three groups of six, set in pairs off three staircases and rising three storeys, with a semi-basement to the wing fronting Great North Road.

The elevation to Great North Road displays three windows per floor on the principal levels. All windows are steel with opening casements on projecting hinges. The ground floor contains five small lights and two groups of three lights serving storage rooms and a boiler house. Upper floors feature projecting concrete frames to square windows with inset metal frames and side casements, with a small larder window on each floor. A ridge chimney and boiler house stack occupy the right side.

The right return to Graham Park Road presents a projecting gable for the front range with a window to the left of the stack and balconies to the right. The long range to the right of the gable extends three storeys. The flats are arranged in three groups of seven bays, each with double glazed doors recessed under a canopy on sloping metal poles. Above the entrances are two stair windows. Two flats occupy each floor, flanked by tiers of balconies with four windows, the central pair larger. Windows sit in projecting concrete frames and balconies feature patterned steel balustrades. Doors at each end of the balconies provide access to the kitchen and staircase. Rubbish chutes are located on each balcony except the ground floor, which has a rubbish bin at the chute base in a cupboard.

The rear elevation, overlooking The Poplars, contains similar balconies accessed from the sitting room and main bedroom. A colonnaded shelter on the left return of the front range, designed as a sheltered play area for small children, provides access to storage cupboards and the boiler room. Heating is supplied by a district system on a loop, with original radiators surviving.

The interiors feature fine open-well staircases with steel balustrades and tiled floors and dados. Each flat has a recessed glass brick beside the door with a letter box set in the wall beneath. A long corridor contains toilet, bathroom and kitchen on one side and bedrooms on the other. At the corridor's end, the dining room adjoins the kitchen and the sitting room adjoins the main bedroom. The kitchen includes a hatch to the dining room and, in some flats, original storage shelves, cupboards and a tiled shelf over an alcove fitted with a gas pipe, possibly for an oven or refrigerator. A glazed screen between the dining and sitting rooms allows good light to each space. Skirting boards are curved to provide a wide flat edge for fitted carpets to ease cleaning. The standard of planning and finish throughout is very high.

The site is enclosed by low walls with chamfered stone coping and steel or wrought-iron gates matching the wall height. A row of fourteen garages facing The Poplars forms an integral part of the scheme, with some doors renewed.