Golden Lane Estate
Crescent House
Crescent House runs the length of the estate along Goswell Road, from just below Old Street in the north to Fann street in the south. It was the last building to be built and its design differs markedly from anything else in the estate.
To start with it forms a long curve, where all the other buildings are rectangular blocks. The most noted effect achieved by the architects is that the roofline of the building also expands in a curve upwards towards the Fann Street end.
Crescent House does not use the brick cross-wall construction of the other houses on the estate. Instead concrete is far more evident. The windows on other buildings in the estate slide, but many of the Crescent House windows are either normal casement windows or the type which open horizontally.
Instead of the flats following the shape of the façade, bay window structures jut out for each flat. They are more like traditional parallel bay windows at the back towards Great Arthur House, but at the front, on Goswell Road, the effect is more interesting and the bay windows jut out at slightly different angles to the curving frontage.
It has a different appearance from the rest of the buildings because the walls are concrete, metal work is painted black, and facia panels are painted white.
Also unlike anything else on the estate, these buildings are part business and part residential. Shops take up the ground floor. Both at the front and back the upper flat floors overhang by a few feet, supported by columns. This is one of the architectural features of the estate, repeated in Stanley Cohen House on the other side. The whole building finally ends with the Shakespeare Pub at ground floor level.
The estate is grade II listed, but Crescent House is grade II * listed – a more exclusive category. One practical effect is that it entitles it to more grants for maintenance; and the exterior does seems a bit weary. It was the last house built by the architects, before they began work on the Barbican, and there are clear Barbican elements present, such as the round-arched windows on the top floor.
