Charles Holden

In one of our Contextual Studies lessons we looked at London transport in the inter-war years. One of the names that came up was Charled Holden and we had talked about how he had developed architecture for the tube. I was intrigued by this and decided to do some further research into him and see what he had designed.

Charles was born in 1875 in Bolton, leaving school at the age of 13 he obtained his first job as a railway clerk. As well as this he attended evening classes in mechanical drawing and received an apprenticeship to a Manchester architect.

During his apprenticeship he attended further evening classes to learn more about architecture. Charles achieved a first class honours in Building Construction, Brickwork and Masonry. By 1899 he was working with H Percy Adams in London and later became a partner in the firm. He established his reputation with buildings such as:

• King Edward VII Sanatorium in Midhurst

• The Headquarters of the British Medical Association on the Strand

Holden’s typical approach was to combine art and functional architecture.

During WW1 Holden was sent to France to mark and register the graves of soldiers killed in battle, in 1920 he was appointed to the Imperial War graves commission and helped with the designing of many war cemeteries in both France and Belgium.

Charles was then commissioned by Frank Pick, the commercial manager of the Underground electric railways company, to redesign a side entrance at Westminster station. This led to many collaborations such as:

• Redesigning many station facades including Holborn

• These included projecting canopies displaying the station name

• Stations for the Northern line extensions

Charles’ firm, Adams Holden & Pearson, acted as consulting architects to the U.E.R.L. and later the London Passenger Transport Board throughout the 1920/30’s.

By 1926 he was commissioned to design a new headquarters for the U.E.R.L. which became the London transport headquarters. This won his the Royal Institute of British Architects’ London Architecture Medal. The design was innovative and had many Art-Deco style features.