Imposing: the corner of the 1930s Russell Court, London, looking west
There are over 35 Art Deco buildings in London, and while they are sprinkled around, most seem to be in the western half of the city’s centre. Walking to Covent Garden to have our post-wedding breakfast at Upper Deck, the café in the Transport Museum yesterday morning, we chanced upon one of them, Russell Court, on Woburn Place.
My flat in Ipswich is part of an eighteen-strong purpose-built development in three blocks of six built in the late 1930s. I thought that was unique in itself; at the time the apartments must have been quite luxurious – they’re certainly large, quiet, well-made, and eclipse anything modern. But they have nothing on the scale of Russell Court.
A development of over eighty apartments over eight floors, and made of dark red brick, there almost definitely some similarities with my place in Ipswich. Rows of crittal bay-fronted windows give way to two concrete column entrances. Russell Court is certainly obvious, imposing and grand in scale, but yet somehow glamorous, too.
Around the corner in Coram Street there’s yet more flats, just as equally packed in and with as beautifully stylish a façade as their relatives a few yards away. One of the best aspects of the development, though, is the Coram Street car park, which is tucked away underground, and with 90 spaces, provides out of sight and off-street parking for £19.00 per day.
Close-up: rows of crittal windows on the corner of 1930s Russell Court
Now run by NCP, dark and open-mouthed tunnel must be famous for something other than swallowing cars for combustion engine powered commuters. I’d heard about it before, and seen it on the television, but I could turn up nothing noteworthy about it or Russell Court on the internet. The brickwork above the entrance curves around in a gentle fashion, and rows upon rows of tall windows look out onto the sun in the west.
A forecourt and filling station used to reside on the corner of the car park entrance, at the junction of Coram Street and Woburn Place. Well-to-do motorists used to have to drive into the car park over part of the filling station forecourt, and there have been many previous planning applications to change the building just in front of the entrance, all of which have been refused.
Rightly so, too. An underrated and spectacular display of 1930s architecture, Russell Court and its underground car park are more deserving of a more sparkling and less ordinary history that seems to have eluded it. Of course, if you should know of a more glamorous previous life in the history of the development, please post a comment below.
