Town Hall
The civic buildings of the borough included the Town Hall (originally the Vestry Hall) in Old Street with the Magistrates Court (derelict in 2007), the Coroner's Court in Boundary St and other civic offices nearby.
The original Vestry Hall of 1866 was described at the time as the 'grandest in London' and was designed by Caesar Augustus Long, a local architect about whom little is known. On the abolition of the London Vestries it became the town hall and was extended and enlarged in 1902 and 1938. The building is embellished with symbolic statuary alluding to the borough motto: "More Light, More Power". As the 1902 extensions were being completed the building caught fire and substantial rebuilding was needed. Surplus to requirements following the abolition of Shoreditch Borough in 1965 it fell into increasing disuse and was leased to a charitable Trust in 1998 who carried out a £3.5m restoration and now run it as a self-sustaining community business.
The borough motto commemorates the provision of electric power to the borough from the Vestry of St Leonard Shoreditch Electric Light Station later known as the Shoreditch Borough Refuse Destructor and Generating Station on Coronet Street. This building is embellished with the motto E PULVERE LUX ET VIS (Out of the dust, light and power). It was built in 1896 and burned rubbish, to provide steam for the electricity generator. The waste heat was used to heat the public baths next door ( and now demolished). The building is now home to The Circus Space
Read more about this topic: Metropolitan Borough Of Shoreditch
Famous quotes containing the words town and/or hall:
“Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed in retirement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)