Architectural folly
BLACKPOOL CASINO AT NIGHT
Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach developed at the southern end of the resort from an informal fairground at the beginning of the twentieth century. It relied from the outset upon American rides and was soon advertising itself as England’s greatest American amusement park. In 1931, while on a visit to Philadelphia, the Pleasure Beach’s new managing director Leonard Thompson saw parks themed in the modernist style and thought the style might suit the Pleasure Beach.
He initially employed a Philadelphia architect, Edward Schoeppe, to design a new frontage to the park. However, in 1933 Thompson brought in Joseph Emberton to give the Pleasure Beach a unified image. By the end of the decade there was not a corner of the park that had not been transformed in the Emberton style. Old rides that did survive were at the very least given modernist kiosks and signage. Many of his designs had the spontaneity of exhibition buildings of the period, but, similarly lacked durability.
Emberton’s work for the Pleasure Beach culminated in a replacement for the wedding-cake-like Casino building of 1913. Despite the name, neither this building nor its replacement were ever intended or used for gambling. Emberton designed it from 1937 with local man Halstead Best as associate architect.
Although a very different building, the Casino inevitably draws comparison with the De la Warr Pavilion, but whereas the latter stands in splendid isolation on Bexhill’s sea front, the Casino has to compete with what is perhaps the most visually intensive backdrop in the country. Its main staircase, however, owes something to Gropius’s model factory for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition at Cologne.
The building was opened in May 1939 by Baron Stamp. Although it attracted articles in the leading architectural magazines, people then had other preoccupations. Little over a year later, Stamp and his wife were killed when their house in Kent was bombed.( 20th Century Society)
BLACKPOOL CASINO AT NIGHT
Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach developed at the southern end of the resort from an informal fairground at the beginning of the twentieth century. It relied from the outset upon American rides and was soon advertising itself as England’s greatest American amusement park. In 1931, while on a visit to Philadelphia, the Pleasure Beach’s new managing director Leonard Thompson saw parks themed in the modernist style and thought the style might suit the Pleasure Beach.
He initially employed a Philadelphia architect, Edward Schoeppe, to design a new frontage to the park. However, in 1933 Thompson brought in Joseph Emberton to give the Pleasure Beach a unified image. By the end of the decade there was not a corner of the park that had not been transformed in the Emberton style. Old rides that did survive were at the very least given modernist kiosks and signage. Many of his designs had the spontaneity of exhibition buildings of the period, but, similarly lacked durability.
Emberton’s work for the Pleasure Beach culminated in a replacement for the wedding-cake-like Casino building of 1913. Despite the name, neither this building nor its replacement were ever intended or used for gambling. Emberton designed it from 1937 with local man Halstead Best as associate architect.
Although a very different building, the Casino inevitably draws comparison with the De la Warr Pavilion, but whereas the latter stands in splendid isolation on Bexhill’s sea front, the Casino has to compete with what is perhaps the most visually intensive backdrop in the country. Its main staircase, however, owes something to Gropius’s model factory for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition at Cologne.
The building was opened in May 1939 by Baron Stamp. Although it attracted articles in the leading architectural magazines, people then had other preoccupations. Little over a year later, Stamp and his wife were killed when their house in Kent was bombed.( 20th Century Society)