Levita House Including Attached Shops and Somers Town Coffee House

Levita House including attached shops and Somers Town Coffee House

Blocks of council flats with attached shops and a coffee house/tavern, part of the Ossulston Estate, with frontages to Ossulston Street, Chalton Street and Weir's Passage. Built in 1930-31 to designs by the LCC Architect's Department under G Topham Forrest.

The main building comprises load-bearing brickwork rendered with coloured roughcast, channelled at ground floor to resemble stone. Reinforced concrete balconies support hipped pantiled roofs with dormers and tall chimney-stacks. The plan features a central spine running on a north-south axis, with four diagonal spines branching from the angles of the north and south blocks to create enclosed courtyards. An enclosed courtyard sits to the west, while the eastern side opens up.

The exterior rises to five and four storeys plus attics. Most windows are flush-framed sashes with exposed boxing. Balconies are designed so the voids above them read as holes punched through the building. The eastern range displays a central courtyard block with a ground floor portico, flanked by outer bays of projecting balconies and inner bays of flush rectangular balconies grouped in a 2:3:2 pattern across three upper floors. The top floor features round-arched voids. Diagonal flanking wings have alternating canted bays.

North and south-eastern facing blocks incorporate central round-arched vehicle entrances, above which sit long rectangular voids with bowed fronts. The top floor has three round-arched voids and a central projecting semicircular balcony, all detailed with cast-iron balustrade. Flanking bays show long rectangular voids with three vertical slits beneath each, while outer bays have paired sashes in shallow full-height recesses. The southern facade includes a Lombardic frieze to the parapet.

The western courtyard is enclosed by single-storey shops with a central fluted Doric screen flanked by pillars with fielded finials at the angles.

The Somers Town Coffee House on Chalton Street forms the southern part of the entrance to the northern courtyard. Built in 1927-28, believed to be by Halsey Ricardo. It is rendered and painted brickwork with a pantiled hipped roof, tall chimney-stacks, dormers and coved cornice to projecting eaves. Two storeys, attic and cellars. The public house frontage features a central transom and mullion window with small panes, flanked by similar windows with central part-glazed doors. The first floor has slightly recessed sashes with exposed boxing.

The interior was not inspected.

The Ossulston Estate represents the most important inner-city housing estate of the inter-war period and the most considered attempt by the LCC to inject new thinking into inner-city housing design. Its development was prompted when Cecil Levita, Chairman of the LCC Housing Committee, reviewed housing policy in light of pressure from waiting lists and the urgency of slum clearance. Despite policy favouring dispersal to outlying cottage estates, the estate was influenced particularly by Viennese housing models and was innovative in its layout and elevation. It forms a group with Chamberlain House on Phoenix Road and the southern block of Walker House on Phoenix Road including The Cock Tavern.