Segas Offices

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TQ3265 1005-/9/10002

PARK LANE No 32, Segas Offices

GV II

Gas company showroom and office. Built 1939-41 by William Newton (youngest son of Ernest Newton). L-shaped Moderne style building. Ground floor built of a reconstituted stone called "Empire stone" which has the appearance of oolitic limestone and upper floors notable for the rare use of permanent shuttering shockcrete slabs used as covering material on the upper floors.

Five storeys, six windows to Park Lane, five storeys, nine windows to Katharine Street. Bronze casement windows. Park Lane elevation has end bays projecting in four-storey curved bays with triple windows and bronze balcony above. fifth floor set back with three end casements behind end bays and continous bronze window set behind flat canopy with glazed roof lights supported on six concrete pillars. Horizontal, grooved decoration above fourth floor and end bays have a plaque with the date 1940 and the letters C G C for Croydon Gas and Coke Company. Centre has five five-light bronze casements with horizontal glazing bars. Ground floor has two round-headed windows with scrolled keystone and four original gas showroom windows stretching the whole width of the five central bays with flat canopy above and central marble door surround (now disused). Katharine Street elevation has set-back fifth floor with five casement windows ad plaques either end. Similar horizontal, grooved parapet above fourth storey and nine bronze, horizontally-banded, pivoting casements. Ground floor has eight roundheaded casements with wedge-shaped keystones and identical central opening with door-case with round-headed fanlight, moulded architrave, cornice and six-panelled door. Right-hand elevation is blank apart from a full-height staircase window. Rear has similar windows including tall staircase window.

Interior contains semicircular, ceramic panel in former entrance hall depicting shells, lotus flowers and vegetation current in the Carboniferous Period. Resited bronze plaque commemorating the Company's war dead. Oak doors throughout and walnut panelling and black marble bolection fireplace to Board Room.

This building was part of a planned group of civic buildings around the Town Hall whose erection was curtailed by the Second World War. Twentieth Century gas office headquaters are rare as the companies had mainly built offices in the C19.

[see The Builder 21 January 1949, Architecture Illustrated May 1941,Architects' Journal 14 January 1943, The Builder 10 January 1947]

Dated: 27-APR-1992