Indian Young Men's Christian Association

Indian Young Men's Christian Association, Fitzroy Square, Camden

A YMCA hostel and students' union built in 1952 with an addition to Grafton Street in the 1960s, designed by Ralph Tubbs. The building is constructed in reinforced concrete with red brick walling and Portland stone cladding. The roof is mostly flat but features a curved element at the corner.

The main building comprises five storeys above ground level, plus basement and roof features, arranged in seven bays. The ground floor is glazed with expressed circular pilotis. The first floor displays a continuous band of windows, interrupted by two projecting screen walls towards the centre and a recessed balcony of one bay. The windows are metal-framed. The two storeys above have individually expressed square windows, and the level above features recessed paired windows set behind expressed concrete box-like framing. The roof contains two irregular projecting pavilions: one for the warden's flat and one rectangular prayer room with a semi-domical roof. A later return block is connected via a recessed glazed link, with a flush brick wall that contains the ground-floor entrance. This addition follows a similar architectural idiom in brick, with slightly projecting individual windows and larger first-floor recessed windows, above a slightly recessed ground floor.

The interior is arranged around a multi-storey entrance foyer at the west end of the original block, leading to a spacious multi-level staircase set diagonally and pivoting visually on a single circular piloti that rises the full height of the staircase into a curved canopy. The basement contains the galleried Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hall. The ground floor houses the dining room with a mezzanine, while the first floor contains lounges and reading areas. Individual study bedrooms are located above these floors. The roof accommodates the warden's flat and a prayer room. This is a well-designed early post-war building with adventurous internal spaces.

The Indian YMCA was founded in London in 1920 by KT Paul, the first Indian-born General Secretary of the National Council of the YMCAs of India. Paul recognised the need for a social and cultural centre for young Indians studying in London and opened the first student hostel in 'Shakespeare Hut' in Bloomsbury, which had been built during the First World War as a refuge for travelling soldiers. In 1923 the hostel relocated to new premises on Gower Street, where over the following 20 years it served as an important venue for meetings, lectures and debates concerning Indian Independence from Britain, culminating in the Indian Independence Act of 1947. The Gower Street building was damaged during the Second World War, and temporary accommodation was provided by the University of London. Compensation for relocation from Gower Street and a grant from the War Damages Commission funded the new purpose-built facility on Fitzroy Square. The foundation stone was laid by VK Krishna Menon, a key figure in the India League and the Independence campaign who became the first Indian High Commissioner to the UK. The building was opened in 1953 by his successor, BG Kher, and was visited the same year by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. The Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hall has hosted high-profile cultural and political events since the building's establishment, including the India League's twentieth Republic Day anniversary event in 1970, where Krishna Menon spoke. A commemorative bust of Krishna Menon was erected in Fitzroy Square in 1977 but was stolen twice.