San Remo Towers And Retaining Walls

San Remo Towers and Attached Retaining Walls

A block of 164 flats with penthouse and office over a basement garage, built between 1935 and 1938 by American architect Hector O'Hamilton. The building is constructed in pale brick with areas of render, particularly to the ground and upper floors, faience tiling, and concrete floors. It has a flat roof behind high parapets edged with pantiles, and pantiled roofs over the staircase towers and penthouse.

The building is arranged in a U-shaped plan around a central courtyard, set over the garage. The five storeys of flats are organised into five blocks, with corridor access provided by separate residents' and tradesmen's stairs and lifts from each of six entrance doors. The central block is served by both the main entrance and its own entrance. Ground-floor through access connects the blocks. The estate office projects from the ground floor of the central block.

The exterior displays an exuberant Spanish mission style with extensive use of coloured faience around doors and in window jambs. The windows are metal casements with small panes, round-arched at ground and fifth-floor levels where coloured jambs are particularly prominent. Projecting balconies of brick and render serve the larger flats, supported on console brackets and featuring coloured balustrades. Glass rooflights illuminate the basement car park.

The six entrances feature double panelled doors set in richly decorated surrounds of brightly coloured faience, with barleysugar engaged columns under Ionic capitals and block designations (A–E, and main entrance) picked out in faience lettering. French doors with small panes open onto the courtyard. Attached brick retaining walls stand at the courtyard entrance.

Inside, the residents' staircases feature jazz modern metal balustrading, while the tradesmen's stairs have stick balusters. The flat interiors are understood to have been modernised, though they were not inspected for listing purposes.

San Remo Towers was planned by Armstrong Estates Limited of Guildford in 1935–1936 and opened on 1 June 1938 as "a magnificent block of 164 superior flats" with rents ranging from £96 to £260 per annum and garage space for 130 cars. The inclusive facilities were remarkably comprehensive for the period: centralised hot water and central heating, an auto vac cleaning system, centralised telephones, a resident manager, porter, daily maid service, boot cleaning, and window cleaning. A Residents' club occupied the fifth floor, offering a reading room, card room, billiard room, and library, alongside a children's recreation and games room. A ground-floor restaurant provided à la carte meals at pension rates of 38 shillings per week, or simpler dinners at 2 shillings and sixpence. Ground-floor kiosks sold tobacco and convenience items and took orders from local tradesmen.

The employment of an American architect may explain the building's extensive facilities and sophisticated design, particularly the grand underground car park. The Residents' club was converted to a penthouse during the 1950s, though the block retains its select character. Contemporary descriptions in 1940 praised the elevations as "dignified and select and harmonising with the general surroundings". Today, San Remo Towers is admired as a striking piece of 1930s exotic fantasy and stands as one of the most impressive seaside residential developments in England of its period.