An Ode to Dudok

Greenwich has always been a kind of exhibition for architecture. All the great English architects have built important buildings in this maritime district, which was once home to Henry VIII and other Tudors. Inigo Jones built the Queen’s House in Greenwich Park, John Vanbrugh built his own castle next to the park, Christopher Wren was responsible for both the Royal Naval College and the Royal Observatory, and Nicholas Hawksmoor designed the church of St Alfege.

I have lived in Greenwich since 2006. The first time I walked around the district, I had the suspicion that the Dutch architect, Willem Marinus Dudok also had the honour of immortalising himself in this historic setting. On the main street I saw an Art Deco building that looked like a copy of Dudok’s town hall in Hilversum. The orange bricks, the sharp angles, the clock tower, the window frames; in every way, Greenwich Borough Hall was a brother of the austere building that Dudok had built in the Media City in 1931.

I was wrong, but not completely.

It turned out that the old district office was designed in the thirties by the English architect Clifford Culpin as an ode to the Dutch architect. In fact, the town hall in Hilversum had served as a model. ‘I was a devout admirer of Dudok,’ said Culpin, who died in 1965, after his project was completed. ‘When I had to design the building in Greenwich, I travelled to see him in Hilversum. Although this great man had a house full of guests, he spent the whole day showing me his best work.’

Culpin worked with his father Ewart, an architect and urban planner who sat on the London city council on behalf of the social democrats. The building received rave reviews, including from Sir Nikolaus Pevsner. The British-German architectural historian wrote in his seminal work The Buildings of England (1951) that this was ‘the only city hall in all of the London boroughs that adequately reflected the style of the times’. After a merger, the borough council left the building in the late 1960s

The Greenwich Dance Agency and the Greenwich School of Management moved in years later, but Meridian House, as the monumental building is now called, has been empty since 2019. Despite a renovation in the sixties, the original interior is largely intact. There are plans to convert it into an apartment complex with 73 flats, as well as shops and workplaces. The big question is what will happen to the neglected clock tower. It provides a beautiful view over the city and opening it to the public would be desirable and, more importantly, in the spirit of Dudok.