Holborn library

• IT’S excellent news that the plans to ruin Holborn library have been dropped, (Shelved? Project to redevelop library is now no longer viable, August 20).

From the start of the proposed “revamp” it was doubtful if the project was financially viable, and it certainly wasn’t aesthetically.

Its architect, Sydney Cook, is usually praised only as the patron of much better architects than he was, but Holborn library at least is an exceptional building the functional integrity of which would have been destroyed had the development gone ahead.

The Twentieth Century Society made it their building of the month in July 2013: it’s well worth looking at their description of it at: Building of the month Holborn library.

The plan was to provide a small number of “affordable” flats by selling luxury apartments on top of the existing building, looking south over Gray’s Inn’s historic gardens.

No doubt every effort was made to make the project viable by paring down the number of affordable units, but happily it turns out that the biter’s been bit: such a glut of luxury apartments has been permitted by the council that there are no longer enough overseas investors willing to pay their exorbitant prices.

The need for social housing is desperate, but this project’s few affordable units would have made little or no significant contribution to solving it, certainly not enough to justify the ruin an exceptional building.

Holborn used to be one of Camden’s “flagship” libraries, Swiss Cottage’s equivalent in the south of the borough, and the Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre is an invaluable local (and national) resource.

Now it’s free of the threat of redevelopment, the building should be restored with the space being redistributed to allow a more extensive lending library and up-to-date study and storage space for the local studies and archives centre.

Now that would be a project worth supporting.

MICHAEL POUNTNEY
Chair, Rugby & Harpur Residents’ Association