History of Little Manhattan

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.

In the 1960s, Croydon High School for Girls also sold its site and moved to a new building outside the town centre. It was replaced by Apollo and Lunar House which were speculative developments by Harry Hyams, the reclusive property tycoon. Their names reflect the era’s NASA Apollo programme of missions to the Moon, and Hyams liked to give his high-rise buildings space-age names, such as Astronaut, Space, Orbit, Planet and Telstar House.

Apollo and Lunar are twin towers built between 1967 and 1970 by Denis Crump and Partners on either side of Sydenham Road. They are 20 storeys high, facing Wellesley Road, each with a hexagonal satellite extending out, mirror images of each other.

Lunar House is considerably larger than Apollo House. Its extra rear slab has a distinctive skeletal superstructure in precast concrete on its roof, which can be spotted from miles around.

After completion, the blocks stood empty for over a year before being occupied by government departments, notably the Home Office Immigration and Nationality Directorate (now known as UK Visas and Immigration) in Lunar House.

The iconic Whitgift Centre, known as one of the forerunners of the modern shopping experience, was built on the site of the Trinity School of John Whitgift, which had occupied 11 acres between the new office centre and North End since 1931. The original site of the school provided an oasis of playing fields in the centre of the town, surrounded by shops from its entrance in North End. However, in 1965, the school moved to its new location in Shirley, leasing the very sought-after land to developers, who demolished the nineteenth-century school building to construct the Whitgift Centre, which at the time was an eight-and-a-half million-pound office and shop development.  

The architects took advantage of the sloping site to build a two-level shopping precinct which could be entered naturally from North End and at the upper level from Wellesley Road. The two levels were connected by goods and passenger lifts and two large circular ramps, which are no longer in place. One feature that many people remember was The Forum pub in the middle of the centre, accessed from the ground floor by a moving walkway or ‘travelator’. Polygonal in shape,  it proved a welcome focus for many shoppers and local workers at lunchtime.  

The first shop to open was Boots on 17 October 1968, and the centre itself was officially opened in October 1970 by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent. It was the largest covered shopping centre in London until Westfield opened in White City forty years later.  

Plans to upgrade the existing shopping areas, including redevelopment by Westfield and a new John Lewis store, haven’t materialised in recent years, but discussions to revitalise the shopping centre are still on track to encourage more footfall to the town centre.