1-35 Lennox House

Lennox House is a block of 35 flats built in 1936-7 to the designs of U E M MacGregor for the Bethnal Green and East London Housing Association. The building is constructed with a reinforced concrete frame clad in yellow-brown stock brick with concrete bands and planters to the balcony fronts. Windows are small-panel metal type and roofs are hipped with pantiles.

The building's most distinctive feature is its five-storey ziggurat or A-frame section, which steps back progressively. This stepped section was designed to allow the flats to be planned as stacked bungalows with generous open balconies, creating an innovative solution to flatted housing. The central space beneath these stepped flats was originally intended to accommodate a local market, with income from this use intended to subsidise rents for residents. However, during the building period the land was designated for residential use only, and this scheme was abandoned. During the Second World War the space was rented by Hackney Council and used to store air raid precaution equipment and as a decontamination centre. A more conventional block terminates the north end of the site, giving the development a T-shaped plan overall.

The Housing Association was committed to providing a garden for each flat. Each balcony is accessed directly from the living room and the flats are mostly arranged in pairs, reached by three sets of external stairways. The recesses for these stairs separate the balconies from each other, providing privacy. Generous window space and the stepped section resulted in well-lit interiors.

An important and popular feature was the use of a cosy stove in each living room, which also incorporated a vent to heat the bedroom. The chimneys for these stoves slope inwards as they travel up the building, meeting on the top floor and emerging vertically through the roof.

There are 35 flats arranged with three-bedroom flats on the first floor, two-bedroom flats on the intervening levels, and one-bedroom flats on the top floor.

The step-back design draws inspiration from a 1925 apartment block for working-class tenants in the Rue des Amiraux in Paris by Henri Sauvage. The concept was unique in pre-war social housing, anticipating the much larger Brunswick Centre in Camden, built in 1967-72.

MacGregor (1891-1984) was fascinated by engineering and its application to architecture. After wartime service in the Artists' Rifles, he joined A R Powys in 1920 on the technical panels of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and is largely remembered today for his role in repairing and preserving many historic buildings. However, he regularly combined traditional claddings with innovative concrete frame constructions in his own buildings, driven by a desire to develop low-cost housing prototypes, working extensively with the British Cast Concrete Federation. Lennox House is thought to be his most successful building.