page_title: Methodist Central Hall, Westminster
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Methodist Central Hall, Westminster / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Methodist Central Hall Westminster - Great Hall Dome
context_page_description: The Methodist Central Hall is a multi-purpose venue and tourist attraction in the City of Westminster, London. It serves primarily as a Methodist church and a conference centre, but also as an art gallery and an office building. It contains twenty-two conference, meeting and seminar rooms, the largest being the Great Hall, which seats 2300.
  Central Hall occupies the corner of Tothill Street and Storeys Gate just off Victoria Street in London, near the junction with The Sanctuary next to the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre and facing Westminster Abbey.
context_section_description: The Methodist Central Hall is a Grade II* listed building. It was designed by Edwin Alfred Rickards, of the firm Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards. This company also designed the City Hall building in Cathays Park, Cardiff, with which it shares many similarities. Although clad in an elaborate baroque style, to contrast with Westminster Abbey, it is an early example of the use of a reinforced concrete frame for a building in Britain. The interior was similarly planned on a Piranesian scale, although the execution was rather more economical.
  The original 1904 design included two small towers on the main (east) façade, facing Westminster Abbey. These were never built, supposedly because of an outcry that they would reduce the dominance of Nicholas Hawksmoor's west towers at Westminster Abbey in views from St James's Park. The hall was eventually finished in 1911.
  The domed ceiling of the Great Hall is reputed to be the second largest of its type in the world. The vast scale of the self-supporting ferro-concrete structure reflects the original intention that Central Hall was intended to be "an open-air meeting place with a roof on".
  The angels in the exterior spandrels were designed by Henry Poole.
caption: Looking up into the dome
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