Belvedere Court With Walls And Gatepiers To South

Belvedere Court is a purpose-built apartment building of 56 flats arranged in three linked ranges, constructed in 1937-8 on the north side of Lyttelton Road. It was designed by Ernst Freud for the Church Estate Commissioners, with H Meckhonik as contractors. The building is accompanied by front walls and gatepiers.

The structure rises four storeys and exemplifies the Moderne style. Three linked blocks are arranged in a slightly canted formation, exploiting the eastward slope of the site by setting each successive block down by half a level, so that the cill bands of one block align with the window head bands of the next. The external treatment features contrasting brown brick in Flemish bond with bands and copings of reconstituted stone. Mansard attic roofs with brown tilehanging cover the outer slopes of the main blocks, while flat roofs top the linking and end pavilions. Brick stacks punctuate the roofline.

The plan comprises three blocks, each with a series of staircases providing access to two flats on each of the four floors. Entrances are positioned at the ends and centre of each block. The rear elevation includes garages and stores, with trades' hoists served by their own intercom and dust chutes, accessed from recessed kitchen balconies.

The facades are dominated by plain-glazed Critall metal casement windows in timber surrounds, many with top-hung night vents in the outer lights. Windows are grouped with horizontal bands on each level by projecting heads and cills. The curved pavilion fronts at each end contain five three-light windows from ground to third floor, separated by circular columns and swept around semi-circular curved ends. The main blocks comprise 11, 11 and 12 bays respectively, with four and six-light windows on the ground to second floors. The third floor is treated as an attic with similar windows set in shallow dormers. Block ends are detailed as pavilions, terminating on the line of side entrances, and feature long landing windows lighting the first and second floors, subsidiary windows without banding, and four narrow two-light dormers in the attic.

Entrances are recessed in projecting banded artificial stone surrounds with flat projecting canopy heads, fitted with glazed hardwood twin-leaf doors.

The interiors feature staircase halls with black stone skirtings and solid timber-topped balustrades with handrails. Original doors to individual flats are fitted with circular windows and chrome finished door furniture. The flat interiors are described as simple and elegant. Surviving fireplaces are substantial, with chrome surrounds, large flat travertine friezes, and narrow contrasting mantels and edging. Sliding doors connect the living room and dining room. Some rear balconies retain goods hoists, intercoms, and rubbish chutes alongside.

The front boundary comprises brick walls terminating in round soldier brick gatepiers, which frame the composition of the building behind.

The building was conceived as a set of labour-saving flats in fashionable surroundings, offering a continental lifestyle suited to refugees then escaping central Europe for north London. The flats were originally designed for rental rather than sale.

Ernst Ludwig Freud (1892-1970), the architect, was born in Vienna and was the younger son of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Educated at the Vienna Polytechnic and at a private architecture school under Adolph Loos, Freud practised in Berlin from 1921 to 1933 before emigrating to England with his father in 1934. Belvedere Court is the best preserved of his two known housing schemes in England.