Baskerville House
A stone-faced Art Deco fragment of a Civic Centre that never got finished, standing over Centenary Square as the sole survivor of Birmingham’s grandest interwar ambitions.
At a glance
Baskerville House is a Grade II listed former civic office building designed by T. Cecil Howitt and built from 1938. It occupies ground once home to John Baskerville, the printer and typefounder, whose exhumed remains were briefly a public spectacle before reburial. Today the building holds seven floors of offices, two of them added during a major 2003–2007 refurbishment.
History
Before the council arrived, this was industrial land. Baskerville Basin and Gibson’s Basin served rolling mills and an aluminium works beside the canal. Birmingham City Council bought the site in 1919, envisioning a full Civic Centre. A 1926 design competition produced schemes judged “too ambitious,” so city engineers turned to S. N. Cooke, architect of the Hall of Memory, for a workable plan. Howitt, based in Nottingham, was given the first building. Approved in 1936, construction began in 1938. Then war intervened. Work stopped, leaving a rear brick wall meant only as a temporary measure. After 1945, Roman Imperial styling fell out of favour for public architecture, and the wider Civic Centre plan, which would have filled Centenary Square with a Masonic Hall and Municipal Bank building, was never completed. Baskerville House remains its only realised piece.
What you see
The building carries Birmingham’s coat of arms on its façade, a civic signature amid restrained classical massing. Howitt’s stonework gives it weight and formality, softened somewhat by the later intervention. Between 2003 and 2007, developer Targetfollow gutted the interior and added two upper floors in steel and glass, a visible contrast against the older stone below. Hoare Lea Lighting designed an exterior scheme that picks out this junction after dark. Outside the main entrance stands Industry and Genius, a 1990 sculpture by David Patten in Portland stone and bronze, its letters spelling out “Virgil” in the Baskerville typeface, a tribute to the printer whose name the house bears. A statue of King Edward VII, relocated to a plinth near the building’s south-west corner in 2010, adds a further layer of civic memory to the square.
Cultural significance
Baskerville House is what remains of an unrealised urban vision. Its incomplete rear wall is a quiet record of interrupted ambition, war halting a project before fashion moved on from its style entirely. The building’s survival, and its careful reworking rather than demolition, reflects a broader shift in how Birmingham treats its interwar civic architecture. The 2007 refurbishment earned recognition, including the Commercial Development of the Year award at the Midlands Property Week awards and a British Council for Offices regional award for refurbished workplaces.
Key facts
- Architect: Thomas Cecil Howitt
- Architectural style: Art Deco
- Construction began: 1938
- Heritage status: Grade II listed
- Refurbishment: 2003–2007, adding two steel-and-glass floors
- Office space: approximately 195,108 sq ft across seven floors
- Adjacent sculpture: Industry and Genius by David Patten, 1990
Practical information & getting there
Baskerville House stands on Centenary Square in central Birmingham, within easy walking distance of the Library of Birmingham and Symphony Hall. It now functions as commercial office space, so the interior is not generally open for casual visits. You can view the exterior, the coat of arms, and the Industry and Genius sculpture from the square at any time. Birmingham New Street station is a short walk away, and the surrounding area is well served by bus and tram links.
Sources & resources
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