Building Senate House
The building of Senate House was a seminal event in the history of the °®Ęļ¼§ of London and hugely significant in terms of Bloomsbury and London.
When completed, Senate House was the tallest secular building in the capital, slightly shorter than St Paulās Cathedral. Up until that point, the °®Ęļ¼§ had led a nomadic existence. The °®Ęļ¼§ was initially based in some rooms in Somerset House.
Moves to Burlington House and then the Imperial Institute followed. The choice of the architect, Charles Holden, was made after William Beveridge, the Director of the London School of Economics, and Edwin Deller, the Principal of the °®Ęļ¼§ of London, toured the country to see buildings.
Four architects were then invited to the Athenaeum to discuss the project. Holden, whose previous buildings included Acton Town tube station, emerged as the winner from this process.
The °®Ęļ¼§ of London archive includes the contracts for the Senate House building. Amongst these contract , which dates from 1934.
The contract is extremely detailed, running to over 300 pages (excluding the plans, which comprise the other half of the volume).
This huge volume includes a wealth of detail about the building. Lists of allocated space for each floor give us a detailed idea of how the °®Ęļ¼§ functioned but also they emphasise how much things have changed since 1934. For example, there were abrupt distinctions between the sexes in terms of provision for male and female employees. On the third floor, there were āwomenās lockersā, a āwaitressesā changing roomā and āwomenās lockersā. There was also a women-only common room for the administrative staff.
The index to the contract comprises nearly ten pages, covering everything from āanti-syphonageā pipes to bronze counter grilles. Nothing was left to chance in terms of the specifications of the building.
There were 447 clauses in the agreement, the first of which stipulated that the āmaterials throughout to be supplied wholly from and manufactured entirely within the British Empireā.
These materials were to be of the finest quality: the timber had to be āof the best qualityā¦obtainableā and āfree from all saps, shakes, large, loose and dead knotsā.
The cost of each component of the construction process was calculated in minute detail: labour costs āto groove for turn in of asphalte (sic), skirting and point in cementā amounted to Ā£71 8s 6d, for instance.
Metal windows, fanlights, borrowed lights and doors delivered glazed and fixed completeā, on the other hand, set the °®Ęļ¼§ back the sum of Ā£14,000. The total cost of the contract was Ā£362,579. The equivalent in todayās money would be Ā£23.5 million.
Excerpt from Contract No 2: The Superstructure of the Senate House Block
Holdenās original plan envisaged a huge building, which would have stretched as far north as the modern day UCL Student Centre
Financial pressures forced these plans to be scaled back in 1937. Tragedy had already struck, however, when Edwin Deller, who was showing visitors around the site, was hit by a builderās truck which had plummeted down a lift shaft. He died shortly afterward.
Dellerās influence on the °®Ęļ¼§ in this era was profound and his calm, incisive leadership was much missed. He is commemorated by the Deller Hall on the lower ground floor.
Senate House was in use as an administrative building by 1936 although the °®Ęļ¼§ was soon forced to vacate the premises by the outbreak of the Second World War.
Instead, Holdenās masterpiece became the headquarters of the Ministry of Information. This period in the buildingās history has been celebrated in poetry and prose ever since.
Foundation work in 1934
