T. Cecil Howitt’s Nottingham Council House is an iconic building: it represents the city in a manner which no other image can come close to touching. Since it was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1929 it has been a symbol of the city to local people and Nottinghamians in exile across the globe. More than any other building - St Mary’s, the Castle, the Adams and Page lace market warehouse, now New College - it provides a striking image, which is widely recognised and which is always associated with the city.
Among the architectural establishment it has been less popular. Early critics included Albert Nelson Bromley, Howitt’s mentor, but the most notable criticism came from Sir Nikolas Pevsner in his Nottinghamshire for the Buildings of England series, first published in 1951, and reprinted without amendment in this case in the second edition of 1979. Pevsner devoted 120 lines to St Mary’s Church and 72 lines to Nottingham Castle, but he dismissed the Council House in a few uncompromising words: ‘Not much can be said in defence of this kind of neo-Baroque display at a date when the Stockholm Town Hall was complete and a style congenial to the twentieth century established’. Nor had he finished here: ‘the Ionic columniation is no more inspiring or truthful than the interiors. The only positive interest lies in the plan of the building.’
Pevsner disliked neo-Baroque display, which he considered old fashioned and provincial. Howitt chose the style because, as he said at the official opening, he wanted to ‘provide a type of architecture that was not only fashionable at the moment but one that would be just as popular in 50 or 100 years time.’ Almost certainly this was a reference to the modernist movement, of which he was an admirer, but in respect of which he evidently had some doubts. We know he was an admirer because he travelled to Stockholm in the summer of 1928, to view the City Hall (1923) and Concert Hall (1926, neoclassical, by Ivar Tengbom), and his snapshots were subsequently printed in the local press together with his commentary. He admitted to being ‘particularly impressed ... by Stockholm’s town hall, a magnificent and imposing building.’
Howitt, we may assume, chose an older style in 1924 when he designed the Council House, at least partly because he was concerned that the modernist movement might lack substance. Twenty-five years later Pevsner, aware that the modernist movement had enjoyed considerable success particularly in Europe, was able to use Howitt’s hesitancy against him. Yet in design terms, even if he had viewed Stockholm City Hall before he published his initial Council House schemes in 1924, Howitt would have been hard pressed to follow where the modernist movement led. On the relatively cramped space available in the Nottingham market place a building on the scale of Stockholm City Hall was out of the question, while the straightforward design, which so impressed Pevsner would have been lost in the confines of what was to become the Old Market Square. Stockholm City Hall sits on a promontory at the head of Riddarholmen, one of the many lakes on which the city is built. It is best viewed across the water, and on a summer’s day it looks spectacular. This kind of vista was not available to Howitt. The City Hall is also offset by tree lined gardens with box hedging, adjoining the water front, and providing public space for walking and relaxing - again, an impossibility in Nottingham market place.
Internally, we know that Howitt had to alter his original scheme for what was proposed as a shopping arcade, when in April 1924 the council voted for using part of the building to house civic premises. Howitt was forced into a series of compromises, and the public spaces had to be stacked because of the limitations of space. The ballroom is more or less the equivalent of Stockholm City Hall’s Golden Hall, but this contains 18 million mosaic pieces made from glass and gold. Both buildings have working civic quarters and include Council Chambers. As in Nottingham, so in Stockholm, the Chambers include press and public galleries, and a layout ensuring that elected members are as close to the chair (or mayor) as possible. Nottingham does not have the space for more, so it has no equivalent of the Blue Hall at Stockholm (which is not blue!) where the annual Nobel banquet takes place on 10 December.
But perhaps there are two contrasts which Pevsner did not appreciate, but which reflect significant differences between the two schemes. Howitt worked to a budget. His Council House was brought in on time in three years and on budget at £1/2 million. Ragnar Ostberg changed his mind so often during the building of Stockholm’s City Hall that it took twelve years to complete, 1911-23. So much rethinking went into the building that the estimated cost of 6 million Swedish Crowns spiralled to 18 million before the building was finished, about £3 million. Some of this went into the production of a bust of Ostberg himself: Howitt’s recognition in Nottingham is limited to a wall plaque. The second contrast was in the building materials. Ostberg built in brick - 8 million of them - where Howitt was constrained by the need to avoid brick, at least where it was publicly visible because of political considerations, notably the ongoing council house building programme.
Stockholm City Hall is undoubtedly a magnificent building, perhaps even more so on the inside than the exterior. If Howitt had been able to dispense with the whole of the proposed shopping arcade and convert the complete site into civic buildings he might have been able to create something more impressive in scale internally. But he could never have hoped to produce a striking building in a style similar to Stockholm on the constricted site in the middle of Nottingham. Swedish guide books always display the building from the water, thus emphasising both its setting and the spaciousness of its surroundings, which mean it can be viewed effectively from a distance. None of these possibilities were available to Howitt.
Stockholm City Hall was at the forefront of an architectural movement, and it has stood the test of time. Tourists and summer visitors flock to the City Hall, to enjoy guided tours in a multiplicity of languages, and climb the tower for magnificent views over the old town of Stockholm. Joining the 50 or so people gathered for an English language tour of the building I was struck by the contrast with Nottingham. True, we have no equivalent of the annual Nobel awards to enjoy, and as a provincial civic building it does not have the royal patronage granted to Stockholm. Yet Nottingham barely opens its Council House to local people, let alone to tourists, while access to the dome and its views of the city, is virtually forbidden. 250 local government officers work in Stockholm City Hall, and there seems to be no problem opening the public space to visitors during the day, which in turn generates corporate and other business in spaces such as the Golden Hall - used on 300 days a year for private events - as well as regular weddings in the Grand Gallery.
Nottingham’s Council House is a civic building, and yet ever since it opened in 1929 there has been controversy about letting visitors into the building. Why are our civic authorities not prepared to promote the Council house as Stockholm does its City Hall, perhaps as a tourist attraction?
Could Pevsner really have envisaged something similar to Stockholm City Hall on the Old Market Square site, or was he simply lamenting the deployment of neo- Baroque? We shall never know, but we can agree that Howitt did an excellent job on a constricted site, and his magnificent building has withstood the test of time.
John Beckett
April 2004
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