Bowater House

Bowater House

A block of thirty maisonettes on Fann Street, designed following an architectural competition in 1952. The winning design was by Geoffry Powell; the scheme as built was designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon (1953–56), with Ove Arup and Partners as engineers and Wimpeys as builders.

The building uses pink brick crosswall construction with pink mortar, concrete floor and roof slabs, and concrete balconies (now painted) with glass infill panels. It is six storeys over basement stores with a flat roof. The maisonettes are arranged in pairs along three rows, with ten pairs per pair of floors. The Fann Street elevation features balconies, with lower maisonettes accessed by steps paved in quarry tiles leading down to a shared garden area. Flats are reached from access galleries; upper maisonettes are served by a glazed end staircase with a secondary escape stair in the penultimate bay at the opposite end. Most maisonettes contain two bedrooms, while three-bedroom flats are located either side of the escape stair.

On the Fann Street elevation, the crosswalls project forward to provide privacy to each maisonette, and the block reads visually as three terraces of houses stacked on top of each other. Aluminium windows with timber facing are fitted to living rooms. This aluminium system is repeated on the entrance elevation and continues as the framework for bright blue cladding panels set in bands under the windows. Upper floor bedroom windows project forward; set-back staircase windows serve each unit on lower levels, but the top floor of upper maisonettes features a continuous band of glazing and blue panels. A blue-clad projection to the end maisonettes at the rear of the escape stair is visible. Concrete balconies have steel rails. Brick piers to the courtyard (entrance) side mask timber doors set in pairs. Access galleries feature steel railings and wired glass balcony fronts on the first, third and fifth floors, serving fire escape balconies between bedrooms; those at the end with renewed blue panels serve escape stairs. A fully glazed staircase at the east end has storey-high panes set in timber frames, topped with a monopitch roof. Concrete stairs are expressed as a continuous floor slab on the building's sides. A rubbish shute is located at the rear on the Fann Street side.

Bowater House was the first block built on the Golden Lane Estate and retains the foundation stone, bearing a worn inscription: "Corporation of London: Stone laid by Sir Noel Vansittart Bowater Bt MC: 21 July 1954: Thomas Cuthbert Harrowing late Chairman of Public Health Committee: Stanley Edward Cohen Chairman". Original signage survives.

The interiors feature hardwood veneer floors and glazed screens between kitchen and dining areas. This arrangement, combined with the double-height stairwell, creates a sense of spaciousness despite the units being constrained by reduced minimum standards introduced in 1951. The open-tread staircase enhances this sense of airiness. On lower levels, the stair is climbed from within the living room, but on the uppermost floor the staircase faces the door, and upstairs the bathroom is positioned centrally where it receives light from clerestory glazing. Fitted cupboards and shelving of interest survive in some units, though kitchens and bathrooms are not of special interest.