Government Buildings
Croydon Town Hall on Katharine Street in Central Croydon houses the committee rooms, the mayor's and other councillors' offices, electoral services and the arts and heritage services.
The present Town Hall is Croydon's third. The first town hall is thought to have been built in either 1566 or 1609. The second was built in 1808 to serve the growing town but was demolished after the present town hall was erected in 1895.
The present town hall was designed by local architect Charles Henman and was officially opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales on 19 May 1896. It was constructed in red brick, sourced from Wrotham in Kent, with Portland stone dressings and green Westmoreland slates for the roof. It also housed the court and most central council employees.
Parts, including the former court rooms, have been converted into the Museum of Croydon and exhibition galleries. The original public library is now a cinema, part of the Croydon Clocktower. The Braithwaite Hall is used for events and performances. The town hall was renovated in the mid-1990s and the imposing central staircase, long closed to the public and kept for councillors only, was re-opened in 1994. The civic complex, meanwhile, was substantially added to, with buildings across Mint Walk and the 19-floor Taberner House to house the rapidly expanding corporation's employees.
Ruskin House is the headquarters of Croydon's Labour, Trade Union and Co-operative movements and is itself a co-operative with shareholders from organisations across the three movements. In the 19th century, Croydon was a bustling commercial centre of London. It was said that, at the turn of the 20th century, approximately £10,000 was spent in Croydon's taverns and inns every week. For the early labour movement, then, it was natural to meet in the town's public houses, in this environment. However, the temperance movement was equally strong, and Georgina King Lewis, a keen member of the Croydon United Temperance Council, took it upon herself to establish a dry centre for the labour movement. The first Ruskin House was highly successful, and there has been two more since. The current house was officially opened in 1967 by the then Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. Today, Ruskin House continues to serve as the headquarters of the Trade Union, Labour and Co-operative movements in Croydon, hosting a range of meetings and being the base for several labour movement groups. Office tenants include the headquarters of the Communist Party of Britain and Croydon Labour Party. Geraint Davies, the MP for Croydon Central, had offices in the building, until he was defeated by Andrew Pelling and is now the Labour representative standing for Swansea West in Wales.
Taberner House was built between 1964 and 1967, designed by architect H. Thornley, with Allan Holt and Hugh Lea as borough engineers. Although the council had needed extra space since the 1920s, it was only with the imminent creation of the London Borough of Croydon that action was taken. The building is in classic 1960s style, praised at the time but subsequently much derided. It has its elegant upper slab block narrowing towards both ends, a formal device which has been compared to the famous Pirelli Tower in Milan. It was named after Ernest Taberner OBE, Town Clerk from 1937 to 1963.
Taberner House houses most of the council's central employees and is the main location for the public to access information and services, particularly with respect to housing.
Read more about this topic: London Borough Of Croydon, Governance
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)