Details
ISLINGTON
TQ3184NW LIVERPOOL ROAD
635-1/45/588 (East side)
(Consecutive)
Samuel Lewis Buildings, Flats
501-545
GV II
Block of flats. Dated 1909 on rainwater heads, the estate as a
whole completed in 1910. Designed by Joseph and Smithem for
the Samuel Lewis Trust. Red brick set in English bond with
dressings of artificial stone and roughcast, roofs of
artificial slate. Five storeys. Part of an estate of six
parallel blocks with gable ends to Liverpool Road; the five
southernmost blocks are identical in design though not in
orientation, and symmetrical on both their long fronts; the
northernmost block, nos 601-14, is shorter and of rather
different design.
The block is designed in three sections, each of basically the
same design, but with variations in the outer sections which
render the block as a whole symmetrical; all windows are
flat-arched except for those on the second, third and fourth
floors of the middle bay of each section at the rear; and all
windows are sashes except for those to the staircase bay and
those altered in the outermost bays of the entrance front of
each block. On the entrance front the middle section contains
the following elements (1) a central staircase bay with
flat-arched entrance under bracketed canopy, in a two-storey
porch with battered sides and tented roof; two casement
windows above this, the upper of three lights with stone
mullions under deep bracketed eaves to steep hipped roof with
one narrow pedimented dormer; (2) either side of the staircase
bay is a five-storey bay of sash windows each with gauged
brick head and keystone, under a corniced and banded gable;
(3) either side of this, a canted bay to five storeys, with
stone window surrounds and cast-iron window guards, rendered
spandrels to third and fourth floors and an ogee domed roof;
(4) beyond that a bay of sash-windows with window-guards,
gauged brick heads to the ground and first floors, moulded
storey band between second and third floors, whole of third
floor rendered, deep bracketed eaves and flat-arched dormer in
mansard roof; the division between each section is marked by a
'party wall' whose profile is upswept to corniced chimneys.
The two outer sections reproduce the same arrangement, except
that the gables flanking the staircase bay are banded and
shaped, the outer, five-storey canted bay ends in deep eaves
over the third floor and a canted dormer instead of an ogee
roof,and the outermost bays of the whole block have narrower
windows and a dormer abutting a front stack.
The rear elevation is again in three sections, and employs the
elements of the entrance front in a simplified way: central,
three-window bays to the middle of each range, under a gable
to the middle range and under shaped gables to the outer
ranges; then canted bays with ogee domes to the middle
section, and canted dormers to the outer ones; then two ranges
of sash-windows with render to the third floor; and then outer
bays, which in the centre are of two windows, on the outer
ranges of one tripartite window.
The west end to Liverpool Road has two windows in a shallow
bay to the ground-to-third floors, the ground-floor windows
with stone surrounds under a segmental pediment, the tympanum
filled with putti and arabesques embracing a cartouche
inscribed 'SAMUEL LEWIS BUILDINGS'; tented roof to bay;
fourth-floor window of four lights with stone surround and
cornice; stone sill- and storey-bands; mansarded gable with
stone cornicing. The east end is treated in the same way but
with a stone cornice in place of the pediment and ornament
above the ground-floor window.
The Samuel Lewis Trust was set up in 1906, one of several
housing trusts established in London round the turn of the
century to provide housing for the poor; and the estate in
Liverpool Road, which originally provided a total of 332
flats, appears to have been the first that the Trust built.
(Historians' file, English Heritage London Division).
Listing NGR: TQ3138584540
