Britain’s towns and cities are dominated by great public buildings that serve their communities in diverse ways. Foremost among these buildings are the town halls erected for the purpose of civic administration. As seats of local government, town halls are the power bases that have ruled Britain’s great municipalities for centuries. Architecturally, these buildings are inherently symbolic, proclaiming the status, values and history of the towns and cities in which they stand.

Great Public Buildings of the North East celebrates the architecture of town halls and civic centres in this distinctive region. The survey encompasses the baroque town halls of the eighteenth century, the eclectic civic palaces of the Victorian era and the more abstract civic centres of the post-war period, conceived as beacons of modernity and political transparency. Analysing these fascinating buildings within a single volume, this book asks how the settlements of North-East England expressed themselves through the medium of civic architecture.

Michael Johnson is Assistant Professor of Design History at Northumbria University and Architecture Editor for the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Modernism.