page_title: Buildings and architecture of Brighton and Hove
section_title: Early 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Buildings and architecture of Brighton and Hove / Historical context / Early 20th century
caption_attribution_description: An example of some of the 1930s commercial and retail buildings on the north side of Western Road, Brighton, City of Brighton and Hove, England. The red-brick building in the distance is Mitre House.
context_page_description: Brighton and Hove, a city on the English Channel coast in southeast England, has a large and diverse stock of buildings "unrivalled architecturally" among the country's seaside resorts. The urban area, designated a city in 2000, is made up of the formerly separate towns of Brighton and Hove, nearby villages such as Portslade, Patcham and Rottingdean, and 20th-century estates such as Moulsecoomb and Mile Oak. The conurbation was first united in 1997 as a unitary authority and has a population of about 253,000. About half of the 20,430-acre geographical area is classed as built up.
  Brighton's transformation from medieval fishing village into spa town and pleasure resort, patronised by royalty and fashionable high society, coincided with the development of Regency architecture and the careers of three architects whose work came to characterise the 4-mile seafront.
context_section_description: Residential growth continued in the interwar and postwar periods, and the distinctive zonal pattern of development continued.  Estates of council housing were built east and northeast of Brighton (at Whitehawk, Bevendean and Moulsecoomb, and in the redeveloped Carlton Hill inner suburb which had been subject to urban renewal); middle-class residential housing developed to the north in the Patcham and Preston areas; and suburbs such as Westdene, Withdean, Tongdean and West Blatchington to the northwest of Brighton and the north of Hove had an upper middle-class character. The rapid interwar suburban growth was similar to that seen throughout southeast England, but it was particularly stimulated by the introduction of electric trains on the main railway route to London—bringing a quicker and much more frequent service and increasing the attractiveness of commuting. Meanwhile, Brighton Corporation began major slum clearance operations in the 1930s when the government offered financial incentives. Moulsecoomb and the Pankhurst Avenue area near Queen's Park, both started in the early 1920s, were the first council estates. In the former, the South Moulsecoomb area was laid out first; its 478 houses, on 94 acres (38 ha) taken from the parish of Patcham in 1920, were designed along "garden city" lines with semi-detached houses set in large green spaces. North Moulsecoomb's 390 houses, including many brick-built terraces at a much higher density, followed from 1926. Brighton's first council flats were the four-storey Milner (1934) and Kingswood (1938) blocks, built as part of the Carlton Hill slum clearance programme.
  Several streets in central Brighton were also transformed by the Corporation in the 1920s and 1930s: they sought to improve the flow of traffic by widening main roads in the commercial heart of the town.  Western Road (1926–36), West Street (1928–38) and North Street (1927–36, and again in the 1960s) were all widened.  Many 19th-century buildings were demolished: on North Street, a mixture of shops, houses (some in "squalid courtyards") and inns disappeared, on West Street all buildings on the west side (mostly large houses of the late 18th and early 19th century, when the road was high-class) were removed, and the north side of Western Road was demolished.  Most buildings there were shops with tall 19th-century houses behind.
  Another 1930s development could have changed the Regency face of Brighton and Hove and redefined it along Modernist lines.  Wells Coates was commissioned to build a block of flats next to Brunswick Terrace.  The high-class speculative development was named Embassy Court and was completed in 1935. Praise from the Architects' Journal was matched by Alderman Sir Herbert Carden, who campaigned for every other building along the seafront to be demolished and replaced with Embassy Court-style Modernist structures, all the way from Hove to Kemp Town. He also wanted to demolish the Royal Pavilion and replace it with a conference centre.  This encouraged the formation of the Regency Society, the first of many local conservation and architectural interest groups.
  This era also saw a transformation in Brighton's leisure and entertainment venues as it continued to flourish as a popular resort.  Many large cinemas, theatres and dance halls were built, some in the fashionable Art Deco style: among them were the Savoy, the Astoria, the Regent, the Imperial Theatre and Sherry's Dance Hall—which was near another "much-loved venue", the SS Brighton complex.  Also in the Art Deco style were the Saltdean Lido and another open-air swimming pool at Black Rock.  Older buildings given a new look included the Brighton Dome (originally the Royal Pavilion's stables, built by William Porden) and the Brighton Aquarium. Local architect John Leopold Denman designed many new buildings, typically in a "well-mannered and individual" Neo-Georgian style: most were for commercial use, such as 20–22 Marlborough Place, Regent House and the offices for the Brighton & Hove Herald newspaper at 2–3 Pavilion Buildings, but the Hounsom M
caption: Western Road was redeveloped with new commercial buildings in the 1930s.
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