Celebrating York's greatest 20th Century buildings

It takes a brave – or foolish? – soul then to not only include Stonebow in a public list of York’s great Twentieth Century buildings, but also to throw in details of 29 more, many of them also Brutalist in style and built of concrete.

The launch a few weeks ago of an online ‘gazetteer’ has done just this.

Called ‘York C20: An Architectural Gazetteer of Twentieth-Century York’, it’s the result of archival research by students and staff at the University of York. It can be read in full at www.yorkc20.york.ac.uk

Like any good list, it will entice, engage, give joy, and infuriate in equal measures; over what’s been included, what’s not made ‘the cut’, what’s been overlooked.

There are well over a hundred buildings included on the gazetteer list, with detailed write-ups (or ‘vignettes’) of 30 of them: so plenty of opportunity to start new arguments between us, just as Stonebow House has caused for decades. Thanks!

It raises important questions: does York have interesting C20 architecture, and, if so, what and where, and why is it important?

The University of York's library under construction in 1962 (Image: The Press)

The gazetteer certainly showcases York’s rich C20 architecture and compliments John Fieldhouse’s recent Architecture York; Twentieth Century Plus.

It’s the type of architecture that is the unwitting victim of being present alongside our city’s world-renowned historic architectural masterpieces: The Minster, Mansion House, Clifford’s Tower and the City Walls, and many, many more. It’s not really a fair fight.

One of the great strengths of the C20 gazette is its showcasing of the sheer variety in the city. There’s no dominant materials used, or style, or function; and the buildings are located across York. A tour of them could readily take you from the concrete confines of Acomb’s Cold War Bunker to a Saturday afternoon shopping in Sainsbury’s on Foss Bank, built in 1985 in the then trendy High-Tech style; eclectic and provocative, the list certainly is.

The archival research that underpins the gazetteer brings reward. Who knew, for example, that Tang Hall Library – sadly recently demolished – was amongst the very first libraries in Britain to be built as integrated within a housing estate?

The famous international architect, Frank Gehry, once spoke of architecture needing to ‘speak of its time and place’. If so, we can read from York’s C20 architecture what was desirable and important to our parents and grandparents’ generations.

It’s striking how many of the C20 buildings in the gazetteer are communal-minded.

There are formal collective spaces, such as the District Hospital, Tang Hall Primary, the University of York’s original campus built using the ‘CLASP’ system, or Acomb Branch Library.

But there are also C20 structures in York that brought interconnectivity across communities – such as Siward’s water tower near the University of York, the Telephone Exchange, even the RSPCA Animals’ Home on Landing Lane, the city’s beloved pet refuge.

Finally, there’s the incidental communal spaces to celebrate, such as offices and our ever-growing love for collective shopping – think of Jorvik Viking Centre and joining its queue as it snakes around the Coppergate Centre – both on the gazetteer list.

And how many marriages, friendships, and enemies have come from hanging around the photocopier at the DEFRA or AVIVA buildings?! …also on the list.

There are interesting connections, too, between York’s architectural issues of last century and today.

The city council took lessons from the garden-village values of Joseph Rowntree’s New Earswick (1904+) when it created its own, 1920s Tang Hall housing scheme, providing generous living proportions including gardens front and rear - innovative and combating ills of its day.

Today, City of York Council is building homes once more, working in partnership with award-winning architects Mikhail Riches to meet today’s needs: 600 homes across seven sites geared to bring community cohesion, sustainability and combat Climate Change.

In a different way, Lord Esher’s late-1960s campaign to encourage people to return to live within the city’s walls and historic core - a problem that’s incomprehensible today, given our crazy housing prices! - continues with attempts to make more and better use of upper floor space above shops, as the Helmsley Group are looking to do with regeneration of Coney Street.

The York C20 Gazetteer acts as a handy shortcut identifying heritage often ‘hidden in plain sight’.

Can some feature in a future York Unlocked festival, allowing us to appreciate them from within as well as without? Hopefully so. If the gazetteer encourages us to look again at C20 buildings akin to Stonebow House, then perhaps it’s worth a few arguments along the way.