FAQs

In the post-war period between the 1950s and the 1970s, a regenerative building boom transformed Croydon’s urban landscape from being a town made up of traditional brick buildings to an architecturally modern urban space, rivalling the design, skyline and environment of major cities, earning it the nickname ‘Little Manhattan’.

This development was led by Alderman James Marshall, often called ‘The architect of Croydon’, who had been apprenticed to the Croydon architect, Sir Henry Berney before the First World War. Marshall was elected as a conservative councillor in 1928, going on to join several influential committees such as Electricity and Lighting, Finance and the Food Control Committee during World War Two before becoming an Alderman in 1937.

Plans to develop the town centre had started in the 1930s when Southern Railway sold their Fairfield Site to the Council and a competition to design a new Civic Centre was launched.  Architects were appointed in 1937 but plans were postponed when war came soon after.  In 1943, a reconstruction committee was appointed with the main focus to provide housing to replace bombed-out properties and by 1955, additional housing had been completed for 20,000 people.

During the interwar years, council departments outgrew the Town Hall accommodation and many took over large Victorian properties along Park Lane and Wellesley Road.  Pitlake Technical College burnt down during the war and with plans to rebuild on the site of the Public Halls where the School of Art was also housed, part of the Fairfield Site was earmarked for this new development.  

Architects Robert Atkinson and Partners had been appointed to the scheme by the Council in 1937, and when the first plans of Croydon College were made public in 1951, they were condemned in the Croydon Advertiser as being too traditional, ‘adorned with sham columns and colonnades and other frills borrowed from the time of the horse and cart’.  Robert Atkinson died in 1952 and his partner Anderson took over.  

The final plans were for a smaller building, although it was still the largest Technical College in the south of England when it opened.  Despite the change of plans, much of Atkinson’s design was retained, using Portland Stone, brick and copper roofs.  Building started in 1953 with the first students admitted in 1955 and a formal opening by Queen Elizabeth II in 1960.  The negative reaction to the college’s traditional architectural style probably led to experimentation with modern designs and alternative materials such as concrete and glass.

The NLA Tower (or Number 1 Croydon) was created by Richard Seifert, one of the most famous commercial architects of the 1960s, acclaimed for his wide range of office development schemes and the unusual forms he gave his buildings. The best-known of his other developments is Centre Point in London’s West End.

At 270 feet and 24 storeys high, the NLA Tower was the tallest building in Croydon for many years. It was built between 1968 and 1970 and has been given a range of nicknames over the years  – ‘the wedding cake block’, the threepenny bit building, or the 50p building (if you were in Croydon after decimalisation in 1971).  Its full name was Noble Lowndes Associates Tower, the building’s original principal tenant.  After refurbishment in 2000, it was renamed Number 1 Croydon.

The building has become a key landmark for pedestrians, bus passengers and train arrivals at nearby East Croydon Station. A system of subways were constructed to enable pedestrians to access the station, the Post Office and number 10 Addiscombe Road, the only original building left undemolished due to a dispute with its leasehold tenant.

Miss Kathleen Harding, a solicitor and the tenant of East Bridge House, 10 Addiscombe Road, hampered construction of the NLA Tower for several years. Out of respect for her late father, and with legal skills at her command, she resisted all offers from the developers to sell them the property, and it was feared that the entire construction project would have to be abandoned.  Instead, plans for the NLA tower block had to be altered to accommodate her, with a new roundabout carefully carved out around her home. Miss Harding’s house remained standing in the shadow of the tower until it was finally demolished in 1973.

Corinthian House, on the corner of Lansdowne Road and Sydenham Road, was designed by Richard Seifert and partners, the architect responsible for London’s famous Centre Point building and the NLA Tower, now known as No 1 Croydon. 

This 11-storey block was built in 1965 with Henry Grovenors as the partner in charge of its design and construction.  It’s a sculptural building, typical of Seifert’s 1960s work, dramatically formed, constructed in concrete and faced with bands of mosaic tiles. 

The most dramatic aspect of the design is the spectacular concrete cantilevered entrance canopy, springing out horizontally from beneath the first-floor level.  This feature, accompanied by the v-shaped concrete structural columns beneath the building, known as ‘piloti’, are examples of Seifert’s attempts to emulate the famous French architect Le Corbusier, with tall structures sitting raised above the ground.  These details created an iconic building that shows the significance of this period of architecture.