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 THE NEW CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURTS

THE

NEW

CENTRAL

CRIMINAL

225

COURTS

By Godfrey Pinkerton THIS large pile of buildings, which occu pies the site of the Old Newgate Prison, has been complete for some little time await ing its formal opening by King Edward on February 27th. The old Sessions House (still standing and in use) had become inadequate for its

been carried out by him. Although a neces sity, the destruction of the old prison was greatly to be deplored from an architec tural point of view. Completed about 178a from the designs of George Dance, the younger one of the first four architect members of the Royal Academy of Arts

purpose, while the prison with its arrange ments based on the criminal law of the eighteenth century, although modified and improved, was no longer in accordance with modern ideas. In the year 1900 therefore the Corporation of the City of London invited a limited number of architects to prepare designs, in competition, for new buildings. The winning design was that of Mr. E. W. Mountford and the work has

at its foundation in 1768, it had for long been recognized as a supreme example of a building, which, by the skillful ordering of few and simple parts, clearly and for cibly expressed the purpose for which it was built, and at the same time satisfied every requirement of good architecture. The dis appearance of such buildings, all too rare, is a loss to any city. The illustration is of the main facade, 300 feet long, in the