Architecture

Buildings where the building is the reason to go: the inside-out, the Art Deco, the concrete, and the ones that make no sense at all until somebody explains them.

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55 Broadway

London Underground's headquarters of 1929, with sculpture that got its carvers denounced.

TransportArt Deco

Photo by PAUL FARMER, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Charles Holden built it between 1927 and 1929 for the Underground group, on a cross-shaped plan over St James's Park station, and on completion it was the tallest office block in London. It won him the RIBA's London medal in 1931. The reason to stand and look is the sculpture. Eight reliefs of the four winds run round the pediment above the sixth floor, each carved by a different avant-garde sculptor of the day - Eric Gill and Henry Moore among them - and halfway along the north and east fronts are Jacob Epstein's pair, Day and Night. The nakedness of the Epsteins caused such a row in 1929 that the figure of the boy was shortened by an inch and a half to quiet it.

Where
55 Broadway, SW1H 0BD
Nearest station
St. James's Park · 1 min walk

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