Electric House, Wellesley Road
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Electric House, Wellesley Road by Stephen Richards as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Electric House, Wellesley Road
Image: © Stephen Richards Taken: Unknown
A striking building of Portland stone and marble, with Art Deco/Moderne overtones such as the concave centrepiece with a stepped surround. Unusual fenestration with the windows arranged in grids. Crowning the capitals of the ground-floor columns are urns dedicated to 'fire', 'air', 'earth', 'water', 'time', 'energy', 'flight', 'Elysium', and 'Hesperides'. We don't do things like that any more! It was built for the County Borough of Croydon as electricity showrooms and offices, the architect Robert Atkinson, 1939-42. It must be one of the very few pre-war buildings left on Wellesley Road. Grade II listed. It is now used by the UK Border Agency as an Orwellian-sounding 'Reporting Centre'.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
51.374723
Longitude
-0.09771