page_title: Park Crescent, Brighton
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Park Crescent, Brighton / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: 33–48 Park Crescent, Brighton, City of Brighton and Hove, England. Part of a crescent of houses built in about 1850 by Amon Wilds. Listed at Grade II* by English Heritage (IoE Code 481022)
context_page_description: Park Crescent is a mid-19th-century residential development in the Round Hill area of Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. The horseshoe-shaped, three-part terrace of 48 houses was designed and built by one of Brighton's most important architects, Amon Henry Wilds; by the time work started in 1849 he had 35 years' experience in the town. Wilds used the Italianate style rather than his more common Regency motifs. Three houses were replaced after the Second World War because of bomb damage, and another was the scene of one of Brighton's notorious "trunk murders" of the 1930s. The three parts of the terrace, which encircle a private garden formerly a pleasure ground and cricket pitch, have been listed at Grade II* by English Heritage for their architectural and historical importance.
context_section_description: Wilds adopted the then-popular Italianate style for his design of Park Crescent, which has been described as the most ambitious development of his architectural career. It has been criticised for being an unsuccessful composition, "showing ... his limitations as an architect" with the "muddled and disappointing" proportions of the interior (garden-facing) façades. The gabled roofs on each house are large in proportion to the rest of the exterior, giving a "top-heavy", "busy and awkward" appearance. This contrasts with the simple curves of the rear elevations, facing the streets on the outside. The gables form part of an attic storey which extends from the top of the two- and three-storey houses in the terrace.  They are treated as 24 semi-detached villas at the front, but the rear resembles a plain terrace on all three sides. The linking element between the pairs of villas is a series of three-storey towers topped with pediments. These also provide a unifying element between houses of different heights, which has been described as a mark of Wilds's ingenuity.
  The west and east sides match each other. Most houses have two storeys, but some rise to three; all have a basement and a three-window range with sash windows.  The entrances are in the rear elevation and are paired under single doorcases with cornices, architraves and fanlights.  The windows are topped by similar architraves. At the front, facing the garden, the hipped roofs of the main sections have prominent eaves, and the roofs of the tower sections have similar treatment. Number 1, at the southwest corner, has ground-floor rustication carried round on to its south-facing wall, and its windows are different. Similarly, number 48—the end house at the southeast corner—has a hipped-roofed south-facing wing with a hipped roof, in which the entrance is set in a doorcase flanked by antae.  The corner of the house is chamfered and has a blank two-window range. Several houses in the east side of the crescent have dormer windows in their attic space.
  The curved north side of the "horseshoe" consists of three-storey houses with three-window ranges.  The entrances are again paired, and the windows are sashes with architraves above.  Three-storey tower bays separate the houses.
caption: The eastern side of Park Crescent, showing one of the three-storey pedimented tower bays
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