Brooklyn, Enfield
Brooklyn at 8 Private Road, Enfield, is a detached house built between 1883 and 1887 by the architect Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo. It has been listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England since February 1970.[1]
The house was designed by Mackmurdo for his brother in 1883. He also designed Halcyon (No. 6) in 1874 in a half-timbered style for his mother, but that house was demolished in 1968. Brooklyn's flat roof and regular shape were considered very daring and innovative when it was built and caused considerable comment.[2]
The style of the house foreshadows many architectural trends that would become prominent in Modernism and Art Deco several decades later.[3] Finn Jensen in his book Modernist Semis and Terraces in England, describes Brooklyn as "essentially in a Classical style but unlike any other private dwellings of the period". Nikolaus Pevsner highlighted the house's flat roof and horizontal windows in his 1960 book, Pioneers of Modern Design. Pevsner describes Brooklyn as the "only European parallel" to the White House, E. W. Godwin's 1878 house for James McNeill Whistler in Tite Street, Chelsea.[4] The Twentieth Century Society has described Brooklyn as "proto-Modern".[5]
References
[edit]- ^ Historic England, "Brooklyn (1189207)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 30 November 2018
- ^ Carter, Valerie (Ed.) (2000) Treasures of Enfield: Discovering the Buildings of a London Borough. Enfield: Enfield Preservation Society. p. 125. ISBN 0907318169
- ^ Jensen, Finn. (2012). Modernist Semis and Terraces in England. Ashgate Publishing. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-7546-7969-1.
- ^ Pevsner, Nikolaus. (2005). Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-10571-1.
- ^ Twentieth Century Society (15 February 2018). 100 Houses 100 Years. Pavilion Books. ISBN 978-1-84994-453-3.[permanent dead link]