Municipal Dreams
@municipaldreams.bsky.social
Social historian of housing. Author of 'A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates' (RIBA Books) and 'Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing' (Verso). I blog at https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/.
Plan van Gool (Het Breed) - an estate 1100 homes built between 1966-1970, designed by Frans van Gool for Amsterdam's Urban Development Department. The flats are now managed by the Ymere and Eigen Haard housing corporations. Designated a protected cityscape in 2024.
Nine houses built for the Catholic St Servatius Housing Association in 1918 on Volksplein, Maastricht, designed by J.H.H. van Groenendael.
Social housing built by the socialist Housing Association Beter Wonen (Better Living) in Sint Maartenspoort, Maastricht in 1919; designed in Amsterdam School-style by Z Gulden and J Geldmaker.
The 1919 Housing Act - the Addison Act - received the royal assent on this day in 1919. 176,000 council homes were built under its terms and its standard of high quality housing set a benchmark for decades to come. A 1917 photo of Addison and housing from Newcastle, Lancaster and Winchester.
🚨 New on Substack, a special guest post by Ruth Cherrington on the Canley Estate in Coventry, 'the place where I grew up' ... municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-canley...
Municipal guide of the day: the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell from the late 1920s, featuring the original Town Hall (the former Vestry Hall), the Sunray Estate and Dulwich Library.
![Photo caption: DULWICH LIBRARY, LORDSHIP LANE.
Per Wikipedia: A Passmore Edwards Library designed by Charles Barry and Son in Elizabethan Revival style and erected 1896-7. The original single-storey north-west wing damaged during World War II was replaced circa 1950. The building was refurbished in 2013.
MATERIALS: red brick with sandstone dressings, wooden window frames and hipped and pitched slate roofs with brick chimneystacks.
PLAN: an irregular butterfly-shaped plan of two to three storeys and basement. The original plan consisted of a staircase-hall with reading room leading off to the east of the main entrance, book storage to the south-west spanning two storeys, offices on the first floor, a head librarian's flat on the second floor and a single-storey offset wing to the north-west of the main entrance. This north-west wing was replaced following war damage by a two-storey wing with a children's library on the ground floor and a hall above. In 2015 the original part of the ground floor comprised an open access library to both the main rooms and the first floor included staff offices, a wi-fi lounge, a quiet study area and a reference library and offices on the second floor.
EXTERIOR: the north-east elevation fronting Lordship Lane is of three bays and includes three large arched windows on the ground floor with a projected moulded stone sill supported by stone corbels, Tuscan pilaster jambs and segmental stone arches with projecting keystones. The wider panes of glass used here indicate that the lower sections of these window frames have been replaced as the panes originally would have matched the spacing of those of the upper arched section. [extract as character limit reached]
Photo credit: Ed. J. Burrow and Co. Ltd
Taken from: The Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell Official Guide
Published by: Ed. J. Burrow and Co. Ltd on behalf of the M.B. of Camberwell
Publication date: Undated but appears to be c. 1928](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rdc3t32wbru3m5gcgjsb2t2c/bafkreiax5g5kbd74jhoabntdgi56l2ynlwfmlzjbuihbh3ropltnecpbke)
🚨 New on Substack, a special guest post by Ruth Cherrington on the Canley Estate in Coventry, 'the place where I grew up' ... municipaldreams.substack.com/p/the-canley...
Mannenzaal (Men's Hall), Amersfoort: a dormitory for sick, elderly and poor men, predominantly labourers, founded in the 1390s by a group of wealthy townspeople. A similar women's room was demolished in a major rebuilding programme in 1907 which preserved this medieval relic.
To mark 30th anniversary of death of @openuniversity.bsky.social pioneering female modernist architect, Dame Jane Drew, DBE, FRIBA (1911 – 1996), 1 of 1st people awarded an OU Hon Degree, here are pics of OU buildings from Drew Fry, Knight Creamer 'Architecture', 1978. @municipaldreams.bsky.social
More vision sketches of Craigavon New Town or 'New City' as it was originally optimistically termed, designated on this day in 1965. (Images courtesy of Craigavon Museum Services.)
Modernism isn't for everyone: Graanstraat, Betondorp ('Concrete village'), Amsterdam - a garden village developed by the municipality between 1923-25.
Craigavon, Northern Ireland, was declared a New Town on this day in 1965. Controversial in NI's sectarian politics from the outset, it never fulfilled its early modernist promise but it is now a popular place to live with a population of around 65,000, about half that initially projected.
The fight for the first rural council housing in England (in 1894) - led by FD Perrott, the 'Radical Vicar of Ixworth' and the Ixworth Agricultural Labourers’ Association. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/stow-road-...
In Twekkelerveld, Enschede there was a Catholic housing corporation and a protestant one, due to sectarian Pillarisation, one happened to use red roof tiles and the other black. The result is you still have a clear view of 1950's religious distribution when you check Google maps today
Woonschool (Housing School), De Ravelijn, Maastricht: 104 homes, school and community centre built by the Catholic housing association Sint Servatius in the 1950s specifically to 're-educate' slum families deemed antisocial.
The fight for the first rural council housing in England (in 1894) - led by FD Perrott, the 'Radical Vicar of Ixworth' and the Ixworth Agricultural Labourers’ Association. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/stow-road-...
1/ Travelling from Maastricht to Liège: departing from Maastricht Station, designed by railway architect GW van Heukelom, 1912-15; the stained glass windows by Charles Eyck in 1949, a gift of Maastricht City Council replacing windows lost during WW2. Arriving at the spectacular ...
Brussels Town Hall, built 1401-55, a masterpiece of Brabantine Gothic. Two kilometres to the south, Ixelles Town Hall, built as a private residence in 1833, bought by the municipality in 1849; currently one of the 19 councils of the fairly ungovernable Brussels-Capital Region.
The second post in the thread includes some lovely pics of the new council housing ...
Mike@mikeyashworth.bsky.social · 2w agoThe slender Official Guide to the Urban District Council of Prestwich in Lancashire; this small mostly residential town, between Manchester, Salford & Bury had a population of around 24,000 in ca.1935. It now forms part of the Metropolitan Borough of Bury. #lancashire ↘️ flic.kr/p/2sqDNu5
🚨 New on Substack, Stow Road, Ixworth: ‘Thingoe’s Follies’ - England's first rural council housing, in 1894. One of my favourite posts: historical significance and a good story. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/stow-road-...
Stow Road, Ixworth: ‘Thingoe’s Follies’
They called them ‘Thingoe’s Follies’ – the eight homes built on Stow Road in Ixworth, Suffolk, which formed the first council housing built (in 1894) in the English countryside.
municipaldreams.substack.com
🚨 New on Substack, Stow Road, Ixworth: ‘Thingoe’s Follies’ - England's first rural council housing, in 1894. One of my favourite posts: historical significance and a good story. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/stow-road-...
Stow Road, Ixworth: ‘Thingoe’s Follies’
They called them ‘Thingoe’s Follies’ – the eight homes built on Stow Road in Ixworth, Suffolk, which formed the first council housing built (in 1894) in the English countryside.
municipaldreams.substack.com
Some essential Liège (from a touristic perspective at least) - the Impasse de l'Ange and the Montagne de Bueren (374 steps - we counted them!) in the picturesque Hors Chateau area. It's a very interesting, gritty city in other respects.
Centre Céramique, Maastricht, designed by Jo Coenen in 1999 to house Maastricht's City Library, the Maastricht Museum and the municipal music school.
This is social housing. De Dageraad (Dawn), Plan Zuid, Amsterdam, designed by Michel de Klerk, 1918-23. If you look closely you'll see a clenched fist representing the housing association and architect's socialist principles.
A sneak preview of Het Breed (the Plan van Gool) designed by architect Frans van Gool for the City of Amsterdam's Urban Development Department between 1968 and 1970.
My latest Substack post examines the life and legacy of Octavia Hill - a complex and seemingly contradictory mix of philanthropy, self-help and opposition to state intervention, and resistance to female suffrage. municipaldreams.substack.com/p/octavia-hi...
Holiday snaps of Amersfoort - canal, the Muurhuizen (houses built along the line of the former city walls) and the Koppelpoort, a land and water gate dating to the 1400s.
A remnant of the old London Bridge donated in 1971 'as a permanent reminder to the citizens of Amersfoort of the esteem held for them by the people of their link town Amersham'.
Hofje Armen de Poth, Amersfoort: the charity 'The Poor of the Poth' dates to the C14th. The current 48 almshouses 'offering shelter for a small fee to older people from Amersfoort with a modest income' date to the 1890s.
