60s library swing's again

摘要

Hornsey Library is a modest triumph of the 1960s that deserves to be better known. Much used and loved locally, its architects - Frank Ley and GFS Jarvis - were modest local men. The building was never published in the architectural press, and most experts on the period had never heard of it until it was threatened with closure in 2000. Then a local resident campaigned successfully to have the building grade Ⅱ listed. Twenty years on, it has been sensitively refurbished and finally recognised. Until 1965, north London's tranquil suburbs of Muswell Hill and Crouch End had their own borough council, named after the oldest settlement in the area. Dubbed 'healthy Hornsey', it was Conservative yet progressive, preserving local woodland in the 1930s and building a modern town hall in the style made fashionable by Willem Du-dok at Hilversum in the Netherlands. The library followed on the street behind in 1963-5 when the council splashed the last of its cash before merging with (Labour) Wood Green and Tottenham to form the London Borough of Haringey. A fountain by Thomas B Huxley-Jones features bronze reliefs outlining Hornsey and its medieval church tower while a window on the main staircase is etched with a decorative map by Fred Mitchell of Hornsey School of Art.