Haringey Civic Centre

The building was commissioned by the Municipal Borough of Wood Green to replace the ageing Wood Green Town Hall in High Road.[2] After the old town hall had become inadequate for the council's needs, civic leaders decided to build a new town hall: the site selected for the new building, which was further south on High Road, had previously been occupied by some 19th residential properties known as the Fishmongers' and Poulterers' Almshouses.[3][4]

Construction work on the building, which was undertaken by Gee, Walker & Slater, started in 1956.[2] The new building was designed by Sir John Brown, A E Henson and Partners and was officially opened by the local member of parliament, Joyce Butler, as Wood Green Civic Centre on 15 March 1958.[5][6] The design, which was influenced by Aarhus City Hall and Søllerød Town Hall, both in Denmark, envisaged a public area in the southern part of the building and workspace for council officers and their departments in the northern part of the building.[1] It involved an asymmetrical main frontage facing onto High Road; the southern section featured a large projecting glass frontage with a doorway on the ground floor while the northern section of the frontage comprised nine bays with windows on each of the ground, first and second floors.[1] Internally, the principal rooms were the council chamber behind the glass frontage on the first floor and the mayor's parlour in the west wing of the building.[1] The council chamber was designed with an unusual suspended ceiling which sloped down to the back of dais on which the mayor sat.[7]

An underground nuclear fall-out shelter was established in the basement but a public hall, which had been intended for the site, was never built.[8] The building continued to be the local seat of government, as Haringey Civic Centre, when the enlarged London Borough of Haringey was formed in 1965.[9] A Citizens Advice Bureau was established in the building in 1975;[10] although now known as Citizens Advice Haringey, it continues to operate from the centre.[11] Many of the council officers and their departments moved to River Park House further south on High Road in 2005.[12]

In 2017 the civic centre, much of which is now unused, was the subject of a consultation on regeneration options including possible replacement, but after English Heritage listed the building in July 2018, the regeneration options became more restricted.[13] English Heritage praised its "Scandinavian influence, transparency and modernity."[13]