Electricity Showrooms And Offices

In the entry for:

TQ 3265 DINGWALL AVENUE (south side)

Electricity Showrooms 1005-/9/10023 and Offices

II

The description shall be amended to read 'See under: Electricity Showrooms and Offices WELLESLEY ROAD'.

------------------------------------ In the entry for:

TQ 3265 WELLESLEY STREET (west side)

Electricity Showrooms 1005-/9/10023 II

The address shall be amended to read 'WELLESLEY ROAD (west side) - Electricity Showrooms and Offices' and the references to Wellesley Street in lines 10 and 13 of the description shall be amended to Wellesley Road.

The following building shall be added to the list:-

CROYDON TQ 32 65 WELLESLEY STREET (West side)

1005- /9/10023 Electricity Showrooms

II

Includes: Electricity Showrooms and Offices DINGWALL AVENUE. Electricity showrooms and offices. 1939-42 by Robert Atkinson for the County Borough of Croydon. Framed building clad in Portland stone and contrasting marbles, flat roof not seen. Concave centrepiece on prominent corner site, with eight-bay frontage to Wellesley Road and six-bay return to Dingwall Avenue that includes carriage entrance to circular courtyard within. Four storeys and attic. Central concave facade four windows wide, set between projecting ribs and with early signage in high, blind parapet. Bronze double doors set back in heavily moulded black marble surround, reached up steps and set under curved canopy with round lights inset into soffit mouldings that continues the length of Wellesley Street facade. The other elevations have square, bronze windows with margin lights set without any mouldings in moderne facade treated as a grid of vertical and horizontal bands, expressive of the frame within. Broader projecting bays at either end, with to south a set-back concave staircase bay. Ground-floor to Wellesley Street clad in pale cream marble, with big bronze showroom windows between faceted moulded piers of large dimension, set on granite plinth and inscribed 'COUNTY BOROUGH OF CROYDON ELECTRICITY DEPARTMENT'. The upper floors of the Dingwall Avenue facade identical in style; on the ground floor the contrasting dark granite band continues as a formal outline to carriage entrance. This leads through to courtyard, designed to serve a cookery demonstration hall that was never built. Circular ground-floor treated as an infilled loggia with Portland stone columns under cyma-moulded cornice and blind parapet, with bronze tripartite glazing. Crowning the capitals on top of the columns are a sequence of carved square urns, dedicated to 'fire', 'air', 'earth', 'water', 'time', 'energy', 'flight', 'Elysium', and 'Hesperides'. Stone steps and balustrades to sides. The interior of the building has been remodelled. Source Paul Spencer-Longhurst, Robert Atkinson, Architectural Association, 1989.

Listing NGR: TQ3248665682