Princes House, Brighton

Princes House on the corner in Brighton

Brighton-born architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel designed Princes House in 1935, though it was originally the home of the Brighton & Sussex Building Society. Located at 166–169 North Street, this brick faced, steel-framed building was constructed in 1936 and features such unique Goodhart-Rendel details as pleated fenestration and superb brickwork. It became a Grade II building in 1994.

A truly eclectic architect, Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel, was an architectural prodigy, who had an early design constructed when he was only 16 years old. An accomplished composer and pianist, he studied music at Cambridge, and, during this time, designed an important office that was built in Calcutta. Architecture won out over music, and he set up his own practice in 1909. One of his best known buildings is Hays Wharf/St Olaf House, on the Thames in London. This was constructed 1928-32, just a few years before Princes House. A property developer purchased the Brighton building in 2002 and had the upper storeys converted into 34 apartments.

Two types of windows
Detail of the pleated windows

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: