The Twentieth Century Society is a British charity which campaigns for the preservation of architectural heritage from 1914 onwards. The societies interests extend to buildings or artefacts, whether important or humble, rare or commonplace, that characterise Twentieth Century Britain.
The Sociey was formed as The Thirties Society in 1979, the year in which the Thirties exhibition was shown at the Hayward Gallery. The idea came from The Victorian Society which aims to protect pre-1914 Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Though several modern buildings had been listed on the recommendation of Nikolaus Pevsner in 1970, it was felt by John Harris and Sir Simon Jenkins that much more needed to be done. Bevis Hillier was the first president, Clive Aslet the first honorary secretary. In 1992 it changed its name to The Twentieth Century Society as it was felt that Thirties Society was a poor description as the society aimed to protect buildings from other periods as well.
The Twentieth Century Society is a British charity which campaigns for the preservation of architectural heritage from 1914 onwards. The societies interests extend to buildings or artefacts, whether important or humble, rare or commonplace, that characterise Twentieth Century Britain.
The Twentieth Century Society: A Brief History
Gavin Stamp and Alan Powers
The Twentieth Century Society was founded as the Thirties Society in 1979 – the year the Thirties exhibition was shown at the Hayward Gallery. The need for a specialised conservation society covering the period after 1914 (the limit of the scope of the Victorian Society, founded twenty years earlier) was increasingly appreciated in the 1970s as understanding and awareness of twentieth century design was developing.
Some buildings dating from 1914-39 were already protected by having been recommended for listing by Nikolaus Pevsner in 1970, but these were almost all pioneers of the Modern Movement in England like the Bexhill Pavilion and the Lawn Road flats. Other important works of the period – in different styles – remained unprotected, however, and the public had already been alarmed by casualties such as Oliver P.Bernard’s illuminated Art Deco entrance and foyer to the Strand Palace Hotel, removed in 1969 but rescued in pieces by the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The immediate catalyst for establishing a new amenity society was perhaps surprising: the proposal to replace Sir Edwin Cooper’s monumental Classical building for Lloyds of London by a new structure (by Richard Rogers). None of the other amenity bodies seemed particularly interested in the quality of the existing building, but Marcus Binney, the founder of SAVE Britain’s Heritage, John Harris, director of the RIBA Drawings Collection, and the writer and journalist (Sir) Simon Jenkins felt that it represented a whole body of important architecture of the period that deserved more sympathetic assessment. They invited Bevis Hillier, the pioneer historian of Art Deco to become Chairman, and took the other key positions on the committee themselves when the society was launched at a party in the Park Lane Hotel in November 1979. Clive Aslet, then just beginning his career at Country Life, was the first Honorary Secretary, and Alan Powers became the first Caseworker around 1981.
The name of the new society did not come easily. Eventually ‘The Thirties Society’ was chosen, since that decade was fashionable, but from the beginning, our mission was described as ‘to protect architecture and design after 1914’. The Thirties Society was therefore dedicated to promoting and protecting the best work of the 1920s and 1930s regardless of style; that is, not just Modern but Modernistic, Classical, Neo-Georgian, Pseudish, Gothic, and even Stockbrokers’ Tudor as well (to use some of Osbert Lancaster’s useful terms). And it was not long before post-1939 buildings at risk also presented themselves for consideration, the first such case being the National Union of Mineworkers Building in Euston Road, in 1983.
The society’s first serious case, however, concerned a prominent American-style Art Deco building, the Firestone Factory on the Great West Road by Wallis Gilbert & Partners, which was demolished over a bank holiday weekend in August 1980 by its owners, Trafalgar House, in anticipation of it being listed. This outrage was to the Thirties Society as the destruction of the Euston Arch was to the Victorian Society two decades earlier; it focussed public attention on the necessity for greater protection for 20 th century buildings and led directly to the listing of 150 examples of inter-war architecture (including Battersea Power Station) by the government.
Subsequent campaigns by the society included that to prevent the wholesale destruction of the traditional red telephone kiosks designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1985-6), and one to preserve the extraordinary Surrealist interior and contents of Edward James’s Monkton House (1985-6). There was much public support for these campaigns, but official opinion took longer to shift. After a long battle, telephone boxes became eligible for listing, but sadly Monkton was not preserved as house open to the public as we had hoped. Other campaigns included one to prevent the unnecessary mutilation of London’s best Underground stations and another to draw attention to that endangered species, the lido.
By the later 1980s, many good examples of post-war architecture were beginning to be threatened. Knowledge of and scholarship on this period was limited, but the date limit of 1939 for listing was clearly illogical and the society pressed for the adoption of the ‘Thirty Year Rule’ for listing (which already operated in Scotland). This was, however, a time when modern architecture of the post-war years was widely perceived as an irredeemable failure in both human and structural terms, so that the enlargement of the scope of conservation was, as ever, considered a threat to progress, with the press were eager to latch onto stories of a lunatic fringe trying to preserve concrete monstrosities.
For this reason, it was perhaps fortunate that the test case was the preservation of Bracken House, the home of the Financial Times in the City of London, designed by Sir Albert Richardson, and one of the finest post-war classical buildings. The society’s chairman, Gavin Stamp, successfully campaigned for it to be listed in 1987 and in the end the government accepted the principle of post-war listing. A less than whole-hearted exercise in protecting a few token post-1939 buildings took place in 1988, and the process began again in 1991, under a more sympathetic minister. This time, key members of the Society were invited to work with English Heritage on selecting suitable candidates for listing, backed up by thematic research surveys of post-war architecture all over England. This collaboration was important in ensuring that the choice was pluralistic in its representation of many outstanding but little-known post-war traditional buildings. The chair of the English Heritage Post-War Listing Steering Group, Bridget Cherry, is now the vice-chair of the Twentieth Century Society. Among those recommended was Bankside Power Station, but for political reasons it was never listed, even though it was eventually selected as the site for Tate Modern, as a direct result of the Society drawing attention to its potential for conversion.
With the emphasis of the society’s work not longer so exclusively pre-war, the society’s name – never wholly satisfactory – became increasingly misleading and in 1992 it was decided that we should be renamed The Twentieth Century Society. Membership by this time was around a thousand and income from our events programme, under the leadership of Robert Drake, was making a significant difference to our finances. We began to change from a completely voluntary organisation by employing Julian Holder as Caseworker (from 1991). We now have two caseworkers, a Co-ordinator and a Director (a position held for a time by Kenneth Powell).
Alan Baxter & Associates invited us to join their group of tenants in Cowcross Street, Smithfield, where we have been able to use the lecture space for winter events. After publishing seven issues of the Thirties Society Journal, up to 1992, there was a hiatus before we launched a more substantial scholarly journal, Twentieth Century Architecture, in 1994. Other significant changes have followed. We were eventually put on the same basis as the other amenity societies in receiving support from English Heritage for our casework, commenting on an increasing number of statutory listed building applications.
Prejudice and taste in architecture and design is fickle. In 1979, modernism was dominant, and the Thirties Society provided a counterbalance by its focus on other styles. Ten years later, the position was perhaps almost reversed, but by the end of the last century, the pendulum of architectural taste had swung back again. Nevertheless, under both our names and at all times, we have tried to create understanding of and appreciation of the best of all kinds of buildings erected in Britain in the 20th century.
Aims
The Twentieth Century Society exists to safeguard the heritage of architecture and design in Britain from 1914 onwards. One of the Society’s prime objectives is education, with education comes appreciation. With conservation, another prime objective, comes the continued opportunity for extending our knowledge about those buildings or artifacts, whether important or humble, rare or commonplace as the red telephone kiosk, that characterise the Twentieth Century in Britain.
As a result of our lobbying over the past twenty years, many buildings have already been saved. A notable success in 1993-4 was our campaign to persuade the National Trust to take on the Hampstead house of the Hungarian emigré architect Ernö Goldfinger, at 2 Willow Road, NW3, making it available for visitors. We hope other important modern houses will also be opened to the public in this manner in the course of time.
The new Tate Gallery, housed in a spectacular Thameside building by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott at Bankside opened in 2000 and contains the Nation’s collection of modern works by non-British artists. Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron of Basle won the competition for the design of the new building in 1997. Bankside Power Station, as it was known until decommissioning in 1970, is a powerful work by Scott, dominating the Southwark skyline. The Conservative government turned down our request for listing the building several times, despite the clear merits of the building. Finding this new use for it has saved it for the Nation.
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