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Kingston House, Kingston upon Hull

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Town or city
  
Kingston upon Hull

Floor count
  
12

Floors
  
12

Architectural style
  
Modern architecture

Architect
  
Maxwell Fry

Construction stopped
  
1967

Architecture firm
  
Fry, Drew and Partners

Material
  
Concrete

Construction started
  
1965

Kingston House, Kingston upon Hull httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Address
  
Kingston House, Bond Street, HU1 3ER

Kingston House is a tower block and low rise office development built in Kingston upon Hull, England, in the 1960s in a modernist style.

Contents

Map of Kingston House, 48 Peel St, Hull HU3 1QR, UK

History

Kingston House is a multi storey office development built 1965-7 to the design of Fry, Drew and Partners. The building was one of a number of high or medium rise concrete buildings built in the city in the post Second World War period including the main building of Hull College, 'Telephone House' (Carr Lane), and the Hull Royal Infirmary, as well as numerous high rise tower blocks.

Before the Hull Blitz bombing of 1941–5 the area contained buildings of a type common in the town area north of Queen's Dock, dating to before the 1850s. (The 'Georgian old town'.) At the end of the war much of the street had been destroyed or was ruinous. The facing Bond Street was widened in the late 1950s/early 1960s as part of an uncompleted redevelopment scheme. The building was originally intended to form part of an (unbuilt) wider redevelopment in the area, including a hotel, shopping centre on the other side of Bond Street.

The building consists of a low rise (3 storey) building with wings on either side (north and south) of a 12 storey tower block. The buildings were constructed using a concrete frame with infilled panels. The total site area is 3,147 square metres (33,870 sq ft) and the total floor area 11,416 square metres (122,880 sq ft). Floor area per deck on the upper tower block (floors 5–12) was 417.4 square metres (4,493 sq ft).

The modernist design fell out of favour during the latter half of the 20th century, and by the 21st century the building was often referred to as an 'eyesore; In the Hull Pevsner architectural guide (Neave & Neave 1995) it is described as "uninspired".

Office tenants included Humberside County Council (up to 1980), later Humberside Police, and after 1996 Hull City Council.

In 2014 the council offered the building for sale after relocating staff based there as part of cost cutting exercises; demolition and wider redevelopment were seen at the time as potential options for the site, alternative plans (2015, withdrawn) included redevelopment of the buildings as apartments.

As of 2014 the buildings were also used for various telecommunications equipment including aerial leases to Vodafone, Arqiva, Orange PCS, Cable and Wireless, and Everything Everywhere/Hutchinson 3G.

References

Kingston House, Kingston upon Hull Wikipedia


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