Tottenham Town Hall

In the 19th century the local board of health met at Bruce Castle.[2] After the area became an urban district in 1895, civic leaders decided to procure purpose-built municipal offices: the site they selected for the new building had previously been occupied by four large residential properties: Eaton House, Wilton House, The Ferns and Hatfield House.[2] They decided that the new municipal offices would be flanked by a fire station to the south and swimming baths to the north both to be built in the same architectural style and at the same time as the municipal offices.[2] A school, to be built to the north of the swimming baths, was added to the scheme a few years later.[3]

The foundation stone for the new facility was laid on 6 October 1904.[2] The building was designed by Arnold Taylor and Rutherford Jemmett in the Baroque style; it was officially opened by the Chairman of the Council, T H Camp, on 2 November 1905.[1] The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto Town Hall Approach Road; the central section of five bays featured a doorway with a stone surround flanked by Tuscan order pilasters on the ground floor; there were tall rounded-headed windows with Gibbs surround arches flanked with Ionic order columns in the centre and Ionic order pilasters beyond on the first floor; there was a cupola with a clock at roof level.[1] The principal room was the council chamber on the first floor.[1]

The building became the headquarters of the Municipal Borough of Tottenham as "Tottenham Town Hall" when the area secured municipal borough status in 1934.[4] In May 1962, after Tottenham Hotspur won the first FA Cup against Burnley, a victory reception was held at the town hall and Jimmy Greaves held the FA Cup trophy aloft from town hall balcony.[5]

The town hall ceased to be the local seat of government when the enlarged London Borough of Haringey was formed in 1965.[6] In the late 1980s a memorial to Cynthia Jarrett, whose death in October 1985 was the catalyst for the Broadwater Farm riot, was erected outside the town hall.[7] The building subsequently deteriorated and was placed on the Buildings at Risk Register.[8] An extensive programme of refurbishment works of the building to the designs of BPTW was completed in December 2010.[8] The works included restoration of the council chamber, which was renamed the Moselle Room after the River Moselle which flows through the area.[9][10] The development also made land available behind the town hall for Newlon Housing Trust to create new affordable homes.[11]

The adjacent swimming baths and the fire station, which both formed part of the original composition, were redeveloped as an arts centre and as a restaurant in 2007[12] and 2015 respectively.[13]