233, High Holborn

CAMDEN

TQ3081NE HIGH HOLBORN 798-1/101/835 (South side) 11/08/71 No.233

II

Office block. 1930. By Frederick Etchells & Herbert A Welch. For the advertising agency WS Crawford Ltd, remodelling an existing building. Steel frame construction with brick panel infilling. External finish of roughcast cement with polished black marble ground floor frontage. 6 bays with splayed corner bay. Double entrance doors of plain stainless steel with grille over. Continuous strip windows with frames and mullions of stainless steel glazed with prismatic glass alternate with bands of roughcast. INTERIOR: contemporary internal decor and fittings remained in 1973 but very little now. HISTORICAL NOTE: a pioneer work of the Modern Movement in England, the office block has good claim to be the first office block in England inspired by the International style. Etchells started his career as a Vorticist painter in Paris before the First World War, turned to architecture in the 1920s and was a founding member of the Twentieth Century Group in 1930. In 1927 he translated Le Corbusier's "Vers une Architecture" into English: he ended his career restoring churches in Berkshire. (The Buildings of England: Pevsner N & Cherry B: London, 1, The Cities of London and Westminster: London: -1972: 362).

Listing NGR: TQ3058181517