People's Houses - in United Kingdom

In United Kingdom

In the late 19th century People's Palaces started being built in grim urban districts. The concept was to raise morale and morality through inspiring buildings which offered cultural nourishment. Costly, taking years to build and lavishly decorated, they were designed to provide a focal point for civic pride, venues for meetings and public events.

Notably these were built according to neo-Gothic style, as promoted by Augustus Pugin and John Ruskin: Pugin believed the harmonious style of the architecture could influence morality, while Ruskin in his book The Stones of Venice examined the architecture of the Italian Renaissance mercantile republics, believing it expressed the spirit of freedom. Architects adopted these ideas in their building of People's Palaces in the north of England and in Scotland, both to assert the cultural credentials of those regions and to provide an improving influence over the citizens of burgeoning industrial towns.

In 1899 Joseph Rowntree and Arthur Sherwell proposed that People's Houses should be built as part of a programme by the Temperance Party to provide "recreations of the simplest and least exacting kind, such as would specially appeal to those to whom the stress of their daily lives leaves little inclination for anything more than physical relaxation and cheerful intercourse": that is, a viable alternative to the public house.