Now grot, once not
Lost London buildings
One feature of contemporary London is the sheer number of locally significant buildings with interesting architecture and a key role in the community that have been replaced by private flats or offices that could be anywhere. It's important that these lost minor gems are recorded for posterity, so let?s start the wrecking ball rolling. We want London-RIP to celebrate these particularly missed buildings and we need your contributions. We?ll call this section, Now Grot, Once Not, to commemorate things of social and architectural worth that have been replaced by grot. Here are a couple of my selections.
Manor House Hospital: from Manor House to mishmash
The Manor House Hospital in Golders Green, opposite the lovely Golders Hill Park, was a hospital run for trade unionists opened in 1917 and operated on a contribution basis taken from union subscriptions. The wards were, I believe, named after prominent figures in the Labour Movement. Nye Bevin, the creator of the NHS died there. Architecturally the main building was, I reckon, a late 50s set of low-rise buildings, rather attractively designed. Of even greater interest was an early 50s pathology lab donated by London bus workers and with a beautiful bas-relief engraving of both a motorbus and trolleybus to commemorate this. It was a set of buildings of great social, political and architectural interest that was demolished in 2000 to be replaced by an abomination of a redbrick private housing development that is a ghastly mishmash of mock something or other. Nothing remains of the building not even a commemorative plaque. The only surving remnant is the stone engraving of the buses, which lies forlornly lichen covered under canvas in the London Transport Museum Depot in Acton.
Jewish Free School: mock Georgian without end
Another candidate for a Now Grot, Once Not commendation is the seemingly endless, totally anodyne mock Georgian housing development on the Camden Road on the site of the former Jewish Free School. A lively, thriving tribute to London's social diversity has been pulled down with, seemingly, no recognition of an interesting social and educational era that has disappeared. Not only was it a fulcrum of the area but it as a rather attractive 60s blue tiled and glazed building with later additions. Now instead of children and education we have expensive apartments and increased car usage. Change is often a force for the good but to replace the interesting and inclusive with the ugly and exclusive does seem to be an opportunity squandered.
OK, those are my starters, now let's hear yours. Go on, do it!
London cinemas: Everyman and Electric - well preserved or zombified mockeries?
Adam Woolf writes: Zombie sites are where the shell of something wonderful is preserved but the soul has been sucked out of them. Two examples of these are the Electric and Everyman cinemas. Both of these sites are of interest architecturally and as part of their respective communities of Portobello Road and Hampstead and for their preservation we should give thanks. However, they have lost their role as repertory cinemas and therefore show mostly general release films, and worse still have been bourgeosified into yuppy palaces of pleasure. It is true that the great era of particularly European non-English speaking films is dead but it is no coincidence that these once great palaces of culture have been hollowed out into a zombie appearance of former glory. As the yuppy audiences who congregate in such places in order to be vastly overcharged for the privilege find following subtitles a torture so do they revel in the conspicuous excess of these remade cinemas. Where once the Hollywood way of telling a story was challenged by Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut, once again the simplistic idea of life as a series of resolutions is represented in the surface preservation of these sites.
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| Message: | 1/1 |
| Date and time: | 09/09/2007 at 22:46:17 |
| Sender: | Scarlett O'Harlot |
| The Everyman used to be tops: brilliant three-hour Russian films and Roger Corman cheap triple bills, concessions for students and the unemployed, etc. Now it's fifteen quid for a ticket and you're not even allowed to bring your own sweeties, but have to buy stupid gourmet crap instead. They should have renamed it, because it sure ain't for the everyman any more. The loss of this (and the Camden Plaza) is a crying shame. There's fuck all left for the intelligent poor in London these days. | |
