Du Cane Court is an Art Deco apartment block on Balham High Road, Balham, south London. A distinctive local landmark, it comprises 677 apartments and was believed to be Europe's largest privately owned apartment block when it was built in 1937. [1]
It was a popular place to live for many music hall stars in the 1930s and 1940s and boasted a social club, on the top floor, before the area was converted into flats. Past residents have included the comedian Tommy Trinder. [2] Currently comedian and writer Arthur Smith, the self-styled 'Bard of Balham', is a resident. [3]
During the Second World War it was speculated that Du Cane Court had escaped bombing because it was planned for use by military officers in the event of a successful German invasion. [4] [5] One reason for this theory is that the building was believed to resemble a swastika from above, but this is not true. [6]
Similar Art Deco residential buildings in London include Florin Court, Cholmeley Lodge and Hillfield Court
Balham is an area in south-west London, England. It has been settled since Saxon times and appears in the Domesday Book as Belgeham.
Brian Arthur John Smith is an English alternative comedian, presenter and writer.
Hillfield Court is a prominent art deco residential mansion block in Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden, built in 1934. It is located off Belsize Avenue and can also be accessed from Glenloch Road. It is one of the many purpose built mansion blocks on Haverstock Hill between Chalk Farm and Hampstead. It is close to the amenities near Belsize Park tube station, as well as the shops of Belsize Village, South End Green and Hampstead.
Florin Court is an Art Deco / Streamline Moderne Grade II residential building on the eastern side of Charterhouse Square in Smithfield, London.
Forest Croft and Taymount Grange are two 1930s Art Deco–style mansion blocks situated at the top of Taymount Rise in Forest Hill, London.
The Century is an apartment building at 25 Central Park West, between 62nd and 63rd Streets, adjacent to Central Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was constructed from 1930 to 1931 at a cost of $6.5 million and designed by the firm of Irwin S. Chanin in the Art Deco style. The Century is 30 stories tall, with twin towers rising from a 19-story base. The building is a contributing property to the Central Park West Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places–listed district, and is a New York City designated landmark.
Derek Roy was an English comedian, whose public profile was at its greatest in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Lichfield Court, on Sheen Road in Richmond, London, consists of two Grade II listed purpose-built blocks of flats. Designed by Bertram Carter and built in fine Streamline Moderne style, it was completed in 1935.
The Junior Athenaeum Club was a gentlemen's club in Piccadilly, London, from 1864 to the 1930s, with similar aims to the Athenaeum Club.
Belvedere Court is a residential block of fifty six flats in Lyttelton Road, East Finchley, North London, England. It was designed by the architect Ernst L. Freud and built by H Meckhonik, a London-based contractor, in 1937/38 on land previously owned by the Church Estate Commissioners.
The Regent Palace Hotel was a large hotel in central London at 10 Glasshouse Street, close to Piccadilly Circus, between 1915 and 2006. It was designated as a Grade II listed building by English Heritage in 2004.
Cartwright Gardens is a crescent shaped park and street located in Bloomsbury, London.
The Bedford, originally named The Bedford Hotel, is a Grade II listed public house at 77 Bedford Hill, Balham, London SW12 9HD.
George Kay Green was a Scottish architect whose work after 1918 was mostly in southern England.
Nell Gwynn House is a ten-storey residential building in Sloane Avenue, Chelsea, London, designed in the Art Deco style by G. Kay Green. Completed in 1937, it stands next to the same architect's Sloane Avenue Mansions, built a few years earlier.
Trinity Court, Gray's Inn Road is a 9-storey / 8 floor Art Deco residential apartment block located at 254 Gray's Inn Road, London, built in between 1934 and 1935 by Taperell and Haase architectural practice.
Cholmeley Lodge is an Art Deco / Streamline Moderne grade II listed residential building in Highgate, London, designed by architect Guy Morgan.
Oval Mansions are eight separate blocks of tenement housing in Kennington, south London. The blocks stand between the Oval cricket ground and the Oval Gasholders. After being occupied by 100 squatters from 1983 until 2000, the buildings were sold off by Lambeth Council in the early 2000s.
Marsham Court is an apartment building on Marsham Street in Victoria in the City of Westminster in central London. It was designed in the Art Deco style by Thomas Bennett of T.P. Bennett & Son in 1937.
Russell Court is a modernist apartment block in Woburn Place, in the Bloomsbury district of London, on the corner with Coram Street, just north of Russell Square. It was designed by George Val Myer and Francis Watson-Hart on an L-shaped plan with a curved recess on the corner and a motor garage below. It is one of a number of large apartment blocks built in London in the 1930s and has 501 small "bachelor flats" intended for students and people of modest means. Today, the freehold of the property is collectively owned by the flat leaseholders.
51°26′30″N0°09′20″W / 51.441634°N 0.155522°W