Sullivan House

Sullivan House is a block of sixty flats built between 1951 and 1954, designed by Powell and Moya for Westminster City Council under the Parker Morris housing initiative. The design won a competition in 1946 but was subsequently revised. It is located on the south side of Churchill Gardens Road, and includes elements extending to Lupus Street. The building is constructed with a painted concrete frame, buff and blue brick infill, and rendered side elevations, topped with a flat roof. It rises ten storeys above a basement.

The lower floors (ground to eighth) contain two-bedroom flats, each with a projecting, cantilevered concrete balcony overlooking the rear garden; the central balconies on each floor are paired. The ninth floor provides one- and two-bedroom flats set behind a continuous access gallery with balconies at the rear. The flats, six per floor, are accessed via galleries on the Lupus Street elevation, which incorporates a central block housing stairs and lifts, with escape stairs and refuse shutes at each end. The backs of the galleries are lined with blue bricks, featuring smaller windows that serve as kitchens and bathrooms; original doors are half-glazed. The buff brick facades feature bands of timber windows with galvanised steel opening lights, creating an asymmetrical pattern of mullions. Some piecemeal window replacement has occurred. Galleries and balconies originally had steel balustrades, later infilled with wired glass, with the tripartite pattern repeated in glazing panels within the stairwells. Staircases have straight steel balustrades, and each stairwell has a cantilevered concrete porch hood. Rooftop lift cages and water tanks are integrated into rendered drums, a distinctive feature of the estate. Interiors are not of special interest, but original nameplates remain.

The building was originally called Gilbert and Sullivan Houses and represents the second phase of development at Churchill Gardens, built on land cleared by bombing. Revisions to the original design, prompted by information from the 1951 census and cuts in government funding, led to a request for more smaller flats and the incorporation of access galleries, carefully planned to avoid overlooking other windows. The horizontal arrangement of galleries and balconies contrasts with the vertical lines of the mullioned windows, the bands of glazing creating a translucent effect. Sullivan House is notable as the only block in the estate that is not set on a staggered plan, and the continuous wall of banded brick and glass along Lupus Street forms a prominent visual feature. The design was repeated by Powell and Moya at other locations, including Gospel Oak, but not on such a generous scale or with such a significant cumulative impact.