Charles Holden

Charles Henry Holden (12 May 1875 – 1 May 1960) was an English architect best known for designing many London Underground stations during the 1920s and 1930s, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London's headquarters at 55 Broadway, for the University of London's Senate House and for Bristol Central Library. He created many war cemeteries in Belgium and northern France for the Imperial War Graves Commission.

After working and training in Bolton and Manchester, Holden moved to London. His early buildings were influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, but for most of his career he championed an unadorned style based on simplified forms and massing that was free of what he considered to be unnecessary decorative detailing. Holden believed strongly that architectural designs should be dictated by buildings' intended functions. After the First World War, he increasingly simplified his style and his designs became pared-down and modernist, influenced by European architecture. He was a member of the Design and Industries Association and the Art Workers' Guild. He produced complete designs for his buildings including the interior design and architectural fittings.

Although not without its critics, his architecture is widely appreciated. He was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects' (RIBA's) Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1936 and was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 1943. His station designs for London Underground became the corporation's standard design influencing designs by all architects working for the organisation in the 1930s. Many of his buildings have been granted listed building status, protecting them from unapproved alteration. He twice declined the offer of a knighthood.

Early life

Charles Henry Holden was born on 12 May 1875 at Great Lever, Bolton, the fifth and youngest child of Joseph Holden (1842–1918), a draper and milliner, and Ellen (née Broughton, 1841–1890) Holden. Holden's childhood was marred by his father's bankruptcy in 1884 and his mother's death when he was fifteen years old. Following the loss of his father's business, the family moved to St Helens, where his father returned to his earlier trade and worked as an iron turner and fitter and where he attended a number of schools.

He briefly had jobs as a laboratory assistant and a railway clerk in St Helens. During this period he attended draughting classes at the YMCA and considered a career as an engineer in Sir Douglas Fox's practice. In 1891 he began working for his brother-in-law, David Frederick Green, a land surveyor and architect in Bolton. In April 1892 he was articled to Manchester architect Everard W. Leeson and, while training with him, also studied at the Manchester School of Art (1893–94) and Manchester Technical School (1894–96).

While working and studying in Manchester, Holden formed friendships with artist Muirhead Bone and his future brother-in-law Francis Dodd. About this time Holden was introduced to the writings of Walt Whitman and became friends with James William Wallace and a number of the members of Bolton's Whitman society known as the "Eagle Street College". Whitman's writings and those of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edward Carpenter were major influences on Holden's life. He incorporated many of their philosophies and principles into his style of living and method of working.

In 1895 and 1896 Holden submitted designs to Building News Designing Club competitions using the pseudonym "The Owl". Although the number of competing submissions made was not always large, from nine competition entries, Holden won five first places, three second places and one third place. In 1897, he entered the competition for the RIBA's prestigious Soane Medallion for student architects. Of fourteen entries, Holden's submission for the competition's subject, a "Provincial Market Hall", came third. Holden described the design as being inspired by the work of John Belcher, Edgar Wood and Arthur Beresford Pite.

Family life

thumb|alt=A bearded artist in a long smock sits sideways on a high-backed wooden bench. In his left hand he holds a small board on which he sculpting a relief|Portrait of Charles Holden by Benjamin Nelson, 1910

Around 1898 Holden began living with Margaret Steadman (née Macdonald, 1865–1954), a nurse and midwife. They were introduced by Holden's older sister, Alice, and became friends through their common interest in Whitman. Steadman had separated from her husband James Steadman, a university tutor, because of his alcoholism and abuse.|group="note" Steadman and her husband were never divorced and, though she and Holden lived as a married couple and Holden referred to her as his wife, the relationship was never formalised, even after James Steadman's death in 1930.

The Holdens lived in suburban Norbiton, Surrey (now Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames) until 1902, when they moved to Codicote in Hertfordshire. Around 1906, they moved to Harmer Green near Welwyn, where Holden designed a house for them. The house was plainly furnished and the couple lived a simple life, described by Janet Ashbee in 1906 as "bananas and brown bread on the table; no hot water; plain living and high thinking and strenuous activity for the betterment of the World". The couple had no children together, though Margaret had a son, Allan, from her marriage. Charles and Margaret Holden lived at Harmer Green for the rest of their lives.

Works

Early career

Holden left Leeson's practice in 1896 and worked for Jonathan Simpson in Bolton in 1896 and 1897, working on house designs there and at Port Sunlight, before moving to London to work for Arts and Crafts designer Charles Robert Ashbee. His time with Ashbee was short and, in October 1899, he became chief assistant in H. Percy Adams' practice, where he remained for the rest of his career.

thumb|left|alt=A large red brick building with steep slate covered roofs|Belgrave Hospital for Children

A number of Holden's early designs were for hospitals, which Adams' practice specialised in. At this early stage in his career, he produced designs in a variety of architectural styles as circumstances required, reflecting the influences of a number of architects. Holden soon took charge of most of the practice's design work. From 1900 to 1903, Holden studied architecture in the evenings at the Royal Academy School. He also continued to produce designs in his spare time for his brother-in-law and Jonathan Simpson.

His red brick arts and craft façades for the Belgrave Hospital for Children in Kennington, south London (1900–03), were influenced by Philip Webb and Henry Wilson and feature steeply pitched roofs, corner towers and stone window surrounds. The building, now converted to apartments, is Grade II* listed.

In 1902, Holden won the architectural competition to design the Bristol Central Library. His Tudor Revival façades in bath stone incorporate modernist elements complementing the adjacent Abbey Gate of Bristol Cathedral. The front façade features oriel windows and sculpture groups with Chaucer, Bede and Alfred the Great by Charles Pibworth. Internally, the design is classical, with the furniture designed by Holden and the stone carving mostly by William Aumonier. It was described by architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as "free Neo-Tudor" and "extremely pretty" and by Andor Gomme as "one of the great masterpieces of the early Modern Movement". Pevsner called this "certainly one of the best buildings of its date in the country" and "a model of how to build very large institutions". He designed the sanitorium's V-shaped open-air chapel so that it could be used for both outdoor and indoor worship. Other hospitals he designed in this period include the British Seamen's Hospital in Istanbul (1903–04) and the Women's Hospital in Soho, central London (1908).

For The Law Society he designed (1902–04) a simplified neoclassical extension to the existing Lewis Vulliamy-designed building in Chancery Lane with external sculptures by Charles Pibworth and a panelled arts and crafts interior with carving by William Aumonier and friezes by Conrad Dressler. Pevsner considered the façades to be Mannerist: "The fashionable term Mannerism can here be used legitimately; for Holden indeed froze up and invalidated current classical motifs, which is what Mannerist architects did in the Cinquecento."

In 1906, Holden won the architectural competition to design a new headquarters for the British Medical Association on the corner of The Strand and Agar Street (now Zimbabwe House). The six-storey L-shaped building replaced a collection of buildings on the site already occupied by the Association and provided it with accommodation for a council chamber, library and offices on the upper floors above space for shops on the ground floor and in the basement. Described by Powers as "classicism reduced to geometric shapes", the first three storeys are clad in grey Cornish granite with Portland stone above. Located at second floor level was a controversial series of tall sculptures representing the development of science and the ages of man by Jacob Epstein. Holden was also architectural and planning consultant to the University of Edinburgh and to the Borough of Tynemouth.

Final years

Although Charles Holden had gradually reduced his workload, he was still continuing to go into the office three days per week during the early 1950s. He did not formally retire until 1958, but even then he visited occasionally. Margaret Holden died in 1954 after a protracted illness which had left her nearly blind since the mid-1940s. In the last decade of his life, Holden was himself physically weaker and was looked after by his niece Minnie Green.

One of Holden's last public engagements was when he acted as a sponsor at the award of the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal to Le Corbusier in 1953. The last project that Holden worked on was a much criticised headquarters building for English Electric in Aldwych, London. In 1952, Adams, Holden & Pearson were appointed by English Electric's chairman, Sir George Nelson, and Holden designed a monolithic stone building around a courtyard. In 1955, the London County Council persuaded English Electric to put the scheme aside and hold a limited architectural competition for a new design. Adams, Holden & Pearson submitted a design, but were beaten by Sir John Burnet, Tait and Partners. When that practice later refused Sir George Nelson's request to redesign the façades, Adams, Holden & Pearson were reappointed and Charles Holden revised his practice's competition entry. The new design was criticised by the Royal Fine Art Commission and a further redesign was carried out by one of Holden's partners to produce the final design, described by Pevsner as "a dull, lifeless building, stone-faced and with nothing to recommend it".

Holden died on 1 May 1960. He was cremated at Enfield Crematorium and his ashes were spread in the garden of the Friends' Meeting House in Hertford. On 2 June 1960 a memorial service was held at St Pancras New Church, where Holden had designed the altar in 1914. Obituaries were published in daily newspapers The Manchester Guardian, The Times and The Daily Telegraph and in construction industry periodicals including The Builder, Architectural Review, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects and Journal of the Town Planning Institute. Generally, the obituaries were positive about Holden's early work and the stations for London Underground, were neutral about Senate House and were negative about his practice's later works. The Harmer Green house and most of its contents were auctioned with the proceeds left to family members. Holden also left £8,400 to friends and staff and £2,000 to charity.

Holden on architecture

Holden recognised that his architectural style placed him in "rather a curious position, not quite in the fashion and not quite out of it; not enough of a traditionalist to please the traditionalists and not enough of a modernist to please the modernists." He believed that the principal aim of design was to achieve "fitness for purpose", and repeatedly called for a style of architecture that avoided unnecessary architectural adornment.

In 1905, in an essay titled "If Whitman had been an Architect", Holden made an anonymous plea to architects for a new form of modern architecture: "Often I hear of the glory of the architecture of ancient Greece; of the proud Romans; of sombre Egypt; the praise of vast Byzantium and the lofty Middle Ages, too, I hear. But of the glory of the architecture of the Modern I never hear. Come, you Modern Buildings, come! Throw off your mantle of deceits; your cornices, pilasters, mouldings, swags, scrolls; behind them all, behind your dignified proportions, your picturesque groupings, your arts and crafts prettinesses and exaggerated techniques; behind and beyond them all hides the one I love."

In his 1936 speech when presented with the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal, Holden defined his position: "It was not so much a matter of creating a new style, as of discarding those incrustations which counted for style ... surface embroidery empty of structural significance". His method was to focus on "those more permanent basic factors of architecture, the plan, and the planes and masses arising out of the plan." He described his ideal building as one "which takes naturally and inevitably the form controlled by the plan and the purpose and the materials. A building which provides opportunities for the exercise and skill and pleasure in work not only to the designer but also for the many craftsmen employed and the occupants of the building."

In a 1957 essay on architecture, he wrote "I don't seek for a style, either ancient or modern, I want an architecture which is through and through good building. A building planned for a specific purpose, constructed in the method and use of materials, old or new, most appropriate to the purpose the building has to serve."

Recognition and legacy

Holden won the RIBA's London Architecture Medal for 1929 (awarded 1931) for 55 Broadway. In 1936 he was awarded the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal for his body of work. He was Vice President of the RIBA from 1935 to 1937 and a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission from 1933 to 1947. In 1943 he was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry for the design of transport equipment. He was awarded honorary doctorates by Manchester University in 1936 and London University in 1946. Many of Holden's buildings have been granted listed status, protecting them against demolition and unapproved alteration.

Holden declined the invitation to become a Royal Academician in 1942, having previously been nominated, but refused because of his connection to Epstein. He twice declined a knighthood, in 1943 and 1951, as he considered it to be at odds with his simple lifestyle and considered architecture a collaborative process.

The RIBA holds a collection of Holden's personal papers and material from Adams, Holden & Pearson. The RIBA staged exhibitions of his work at the Heinz Gallery in 1988 and at the Victoria and Albert Museum between October 2010 and February 2011. A public house near Colliers Wood Underground station has been named "The Charles Holden", taking "inspiration" from the architect.

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

General

Charlesholden.com (brief introduction to Holden)
Bristol Central Library (looking at Buildings guide to one of Holden's buildings)
Underground Journeys: Charles Holden's designs for London Transport (online exhibition from the Royal Institute of British Architects)
Map of London Underground structures that were designed or inspired by Holden (from the RIBA exhibition)

Image galleries

London Transport Museum Photographic Archive (search results for "Charles Holden")
RIBA photographic archive (search results for "Charles Holden")
Charlesholden.com (image gallery)

Portraits

Charles Holden in later life (from the LTM Photographic Archive)
Charles Holden by Francis Dodd, 1915 (from the National Portrait Gallery)