Samuel Lewis Buildings, Flats 401 To 448

Samuel Lewis Buildings, Flats 401 to 448, Liverpool Road, Islington

A block of flats dated 1909 on its rainwater heads, completed in 1910, and designed by Joseph and Smithem for the Samuel Lewis Trust. The Trust was established in 1906 as one of several housing trusts created in London around the turn of the century to provide accommodation for the poor, and this estate in Liverpool Road was apparently the first scheme the Trust built, originally containing a total of 332 flats across six parallel blocks.

The building is constructed in red brick laid in English bond with dressings of artificial stone and roughcast, and roofs of artificial slate. It comprises five storeys and forms part of an estate of six parallel blocks with gable ends facing Liverpool Road. The five southernmost blocks, including this one, are identical in design and symmetrical on both their long fronts, while the northernmost block (numbered 601 to 614) is shorter and of rather different design.

The block is organized in three sections, each following a basically similar design but with variations in the outer sections that make the block symmetrical as a whole. All windows are flat-arched except for those on the second, third and fourth floors of the middle bay of each section at the rear. All windows are sashes except for those serving the staircase bay and those altered in the outermost bays on the entrance front.

On the entrance front, the middle section contains a central staircase bay with a flat-arched entrance set under a bracketed canopy. This is housed within a two-storey porch with battered sides and a tented roof. Above are two casement windows, the upper one having three lights with stone mullions, set under deep bracketed eaves supporting a steep hipped roof with one narrow pedimented dormer. On either side of the staircase bay is a five-storey bay of sash windows, each with a gauged brick head and keystone, arranged under a banded and corniced gable. Beyond these are canted bays rising to five storeys, featuring stone window surrounds and cast-iron window guards, with rendered spandrels to the third and fourth floors and an ogee domed roof. At the far sides are bays of sash windows with window guards, gauged brick heads to the ground and first floors, a moulded storey band between the second and third floors, the entire third floor rendered, deep bracketed eaves, and a flat-arched dormer set in a mansard roof. The division between each section is marked by a party wall whose profile sweeps upward to corniced chimneys.

The two outer sections reproduce this arrangement but with modifications: the gables flanking the staircase bay are banded and shaped, the outer five-storey canted bay ends with deep eaves above the third floor and a canted dormer rather than an ogee roof, and the outermost bays of the entire block have narrower windows and a dormer abutting a front stack.

The rear elevation is similarly divided into three sections and employs simplified versions of the entrance front's elements. The centre features three-window bays to the middle of each range, surmounted by a gable over the middle range and shaped gables over the outer ranges. These are followed by canted bays with ogee domes to the middle section and canted dormers to the outer sections. Then come two ranges of sash windows with rendered third-floor spandrels, and finally outer bays of two windows in the centre and one tripartite window on the outer ranges.

The west end facing Liverpool Road contains two windows in a shallow bay extending from ground to third floor, with the ground-floor windows having stone surrounds beneath a segmental pediment. The tympanum of the pediment is filled with putti and arabesques embracing a cartouche inscribed 'SAMUEL LEWIS BUILDINGS'. The bay has a tented roof. The fourth-floor window consists of four lights with a stone surround and cornice. Stone sill and storey bands run across the elevation, and a mansarded gable with stone cornicing crowns the end. The east end is treated identically but with a stone cornice substituted for the pediment and ornamental detail above the ground-floor window.