Charles Henry Holden (12 May 1875 – 1 May 1960) was an English architect best known for designing many London Underground stations during the 1920s and 1930s, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London's headquarters at 55 Broadway, for the University of London's Senate House and for Bristol Central Library. He created many war cemeteries in Belgium and northern France for the Imperial War Graves Commission.
After working and training in Bolton and Manchester, Holden moved to London. His early buildings were influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, but for most of his career he championed an unadorned style based on simplified forms and massing that was free of what he considered to be unnecessary decorative detailing. Holden believed strongly that architectural designs should be dictated by buildings' intended functions. After the First World War, he increasingly simplified his style and his designs became pared-down and modernist, influenced by European architecture. He was a member of the Design and Industries Association and the Art Workers' Guild. He produced complete designs for his buildings including the interior design and architectural fittings.
Although not without its critics, his architecture is widely appreciated. He was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects' (RIBA's) Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1936 and was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry in 1943. His station designs for London Underground became the corporation's standard design influencing designs by all architects working for the organisation in the 1930s. Many of his buildings have been granted listed building status, protecting them from unapproved alteration. He twice declined the offer of a knighthood.
Early life Charles Henry Holden was born on 12 May 1875 at Great Lever, Bolton, the fifth and youngest child of Joseph Holden (1842–1918), a draper and milliner, and Ellen (née Broughton, 1841–1890) Holden. Holden's childhood was marred by his father's bankruptcy in 1884 and his mother's death when he was fifteen years old. Following the loss of his father's business, the family moved to St Helens, where his father returned to his earlier trade and worked as an iron turner and fitter and where he attended a number of schools.
He briefly had jobs as a laboratory assistant and a railway clerk in St Helens. During this period he attended draughting classes at the YMCA and considered a career as an engineer in Sir Douglas Fox's practice. In 1891 he began working for his brother-in-law, David Frederick Green, a land surveyor and architect in Bolton. In April 1892 he was articled to Manchester architect Everard W. Leeson and, while training with him, also studied at the Manchester School of Art (1893–94) and Manchester Technical School (1894–96).
While working and studying in Manchester, Holden formed friendships with artist Muirhead Bone and his future brother-in-law Francis Dodd. About this time Holden was introduced to the writings of Walt Whitman and became friends with James William Wallace and a number of the members of Bolton's Whitman society known as the "Eagle Street College". Whitman's writings and those of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edward Carpenter were major influences on Holden's life. He incorporated many of their philosophies and principles into his style of living and method of working.
In 1895 and 1896 Holden submitted designs to Building News Designing Club competitions using the pseudonym "The Owl". Although the number of competing submissions made was not always large, from nine competition entries, Holden won five first places, three second places and one third place. In 1897, he entered the competition for the RIBA's prestigious Soane Medallion for student architects. Of fourteen entries, Holden's submission for the competition's subject, a "Provincial Market Hall", came third. Holden described the design as being inspired by the work of John Belcher, Edgar Wood and Arthur Beresford Pite.Holden, draft letter to John Betjeman, quoted in .
Family life
Around 1898 Holden began living with Margaret Steadman (née Macdonald, 1865–1954), a nurse and midwife. They were introduced by Holden's older sister, Alice, and became friends through their common interest in Whitman. Steadman had separated from her husband James Steadman, a university tutor, because of his alcoholism and abuse. Steadman and her husband were never divorced and, though she and Holden lived as a married couple and Holden referred to her as his wife, the relationship was never formalised, even after James Steadman's death in 1930.
The Holdens lived in suburban Norbiton, Surrey (now Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames) until 1902, when they moved to Codicote in Hertfordshire. Around 1906, they moved to Harmer Green near Welwyn, where Holden designed a house for them. The house was plainly furnished and the couple lived a simple life, described by Janet Ashbee in 1906 as "bananas and brown bread on the table; no hot water; plain living and high thinking and strenuous activity for the betterment of the World".Ashbee journals (24 June 1906), quoted in The couple had no children together, though Margaret had a son, Allan, from her marriage. Charles and Margaret Holden lived at Harmer Green for the rest of their lives.
Works Early career Holden left Leeson's practice in 1896 and worked for Jonathan Simpson in Bolton in 1896 and 1897, working on house designs there and at Port Sunlight, before moving to London to work for Arts and Crafts designer Charles Robert Ashbee. His time with Ashbee was short and, in October 1899, he became chief assistant in H. Percy Adams' practice, where he remained for the rest of his career.
A number of Holden's early designs were for hospitals, which Adams' practice specialised in. At this early stage in his career, he produced designs in a variety of architectural styles as circumstances required, reflecting the influences of a number of architects. Holden soon took charge of most of the practice's design work. From 1900 to 1903, Holden studied architecture in the evenings at the Royal Academy School. He also continued to produce designs in his spare time for his brother-in-law and Jonathan Simpson.
His red brick arts and craft façades for the Belgrave Hospital for Children in Kennington, south London (1900–03), were influenced by Philip Webb and Henry Wilson and feature steeply pitched roofs, corner towers and stone window surrounds. The building, now converted to apartments, is Grade II* listed.
In 1902, Holden won the architectural competition to design the Bristol Central Library. His Tudor Revival façades in bath stone incorporate modernist elements complementing the adjacent Abbey Gate of Bristol Cathedral. The front façade features oriel windows and sculpture groups with Chaucer, Bede and Alfred the Great by Charles Pibworth. Internally, the design is classical, with the furniture designed by Holden and the stone carving mostly by William Aumonier. It was described by architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as "free Neo-Tudor" and "extremely pretty" and by Andor Gomme as "one of the great masterpieces of the early Modern Movement". It has been compared with Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art and it is sometimes suggested that Mackintosh's designs for the later part of the school were inspired by Holden's, although Pevsner noted that Mackintosh's designs were in circulation earlier. The building is Grade I listed.
Near Midhurst, West Sussex (now officially in Easebourne parish), Holden designed Tudor-style façades for the Sir Ernest Cassel-funded King Edward VII Sanatorium (1903–06). The building features long wings of south-facing rooms to maximise patients' exposure to sunlight and fresh air. The design is in keeping with the building's rural setting, with façades in the local tile-hung style. Pevsner called this "certainly one of the best buildings of its date in the country" and "a model of how to build very large institutions". He designed the sanstorium's V-shaped open-air chapel so that it could be used for both outdoor and indoor worship. Both buildings are Grade II* listed. Other hospitals he designed in this period include the British Seamen's Hospital in Istanbul (1903–04) and the Women's Hospital in Soho, central London (1908).
For The Law Society he designed (1902–04) a simplified neoclassical extension to the existing Lewis Vulliamy-designed building in Chancery Lane with external sculptures by Charles Pibworth and a panelled arts and crafts interior with carving by William Aumonier and friezes by Conrad Dressler. Pevsner considered the façades to be Mannerist: "The fashionable term Mannerism can here be used legitimately; for Holden indeed froze up and invalidated current classical motifs, which is what Mannerist architects did in the Cinquecento."
In 1906, Holden won the architectural competition to design a new headquarters for the British Medical Association on the corner of The Strand and Agar Street (now Zimbabwe House). The six-storey L-shaped building replaced a collection of buildings on the site already occupied by the Association and provided it with accommodation for a council chamber, library and offices on the upper floors above space for shops on the ground floor and in the basement. Described by Powers as "classicism reduced to geometric shapes", the first three storeys are clad in grey Cornish granite with Portland stone above. Located at second floor level was a controversial series of tall sculptures representing the development of science and the ages of man by Jacob Epstein. The building is Grade II* listed. Alastair Service considered it "perhaps his best London building".
In 1909, Holden won the design competition for an extension to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Subsequently, dedicated to the memory of King Edward VII (died 1910), the extension (1911–12) was built on steeply sloping ground for which Holden designed a linked pair of Portland stone-faced blocks around a courtyard. The plain, abstract blocks have towers on the corners and two-storey loggias, and are a further simplification of Holden's style.
The practice became Adams & Holden in 1907 when Holden became a partner and Adams, Holden & Pearson when Lionel Pearson became a partner in 1913. In 1913, Holden was awarded the RIBA's Godwin medal and £65 to study architecture abroad. He travelled to America in April 1913 and studied the organisation of household and social science departments at American universities in preparation for his design of the Wren-influenced Kings College for Women, Kensington. Other buildings by Holden before the First World War include modernist office buildings in Holborn and Oxford Street, an extension in red brick of Alfred Waterhouse's Shire Hall in Bedford, and Arts and Crafts Sutton Valence School, Kent.
Holden also worked with Epstein on the tomb of Oscar Wilde at Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris (1911–12). In 1915, he was a founding member of the Design and Industries Association and he was a member of the Art Workers' Guild from 1917. Unsuccessful competition entries for which he produced designs include Strathclyde Royal Infirmary (1901), Manchester Royal Infirmary (1904), County Hall (1907), the National Library of Wales (1909), Coventry Town Hall (1911) and the Board of Trade building (1915).
War cemeteries and memorials The Holdens shared a strong sense of personal duty and service. In the First World War, Margaret Holden joined the "Friends' Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in distress" which helped refugees of those countries stranded in London by the conflict. Charles Holden served with the Red Cross's London Ambulance Column as a stretcher-bearer transferring wounded troops from London's stations to its hospitals. Holden also served on the fire watch at St Paul's Cathedral between 1915 and 1917.