Description

TQ 1692 NE HALSBURY CLOSE

1157/7/10027 No 1 and attached garage

II

Private house. 1938-9 by Rudolf Frankel. Brick construction, with warm yellow facing bricks on blue industrial brick plinth; stone copings to parapets. Flat roof behind parapet, two storeys, with one-storey service wing incorporating garage towards road, 'L'-shaped plan, at right-angles to the road, allows the principal rooms to face south and west over a sheltered, private garden, with only a narrow comer entrance towards the road. Cut-away corner forming a verandah on the ground floor where a single comer column carries the upper storey. EXTERIOR. Set back entrance door with round light, within porch oversailed by balcony. The door is reached via steps of blue brick corresponding with those of the plinth. The principal rooms face the garden, with original custom-made metal windows with side-opening casements. At comer, set back paved verandah under oversailing first floor, supported on single post, on to which pairs of French windows lead, of metal, fully glazed and with central transoms and top lights. Glass blocks on rear elevation give added light to dining room. Also at rear, trademan's door with round light under thin concrete canopy. INTERIOR. The interior is virtually unaltered. Hall, living room and dining room with oak flooring. Bathrooms and kitchen retain original features, including the bell system between the latter and the former maid's room and living room. Lounge with bookcases. Rudolf Frankel (1901- 74) was one of the most significant of the German emigres to settle in Britain in the late 1930s, having already established a considerable reputation as a designer of houses, cinemas and theatres in both Germany and Romania. This is his only pre-war English work; having designed some industrial buildings immediately after the war he moved to the United States to take up a chair of architecture at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. No.1 Halsbury Close is one of the most elegant and least altered private houses erected before the Second World War; while entirely modem in design, its use of carefully layered brick rather than reinforced concrete responds to the latest ideas of the period and 'anticipates the style of the 1950s.
Sources Architects'Journal, 28 November 1940, pp.439-41 Building, Apri11948, pp.1 04- 7
Charlotte Benton, A Different World, Emigre Architects in Britain 1928- 1958, p.127, 155

Listing NGR: TQ1670692558

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26537784

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