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The Birmingham Post and Mail
building was designed in 1960 by John H.D. Madin
and Partners (partner in charge, D.V. Smith, project
architects Ronald E. Cordin and Ramon K. Wood)..
It’s an early example of a podium and slab
block, inspired by the Lever Building in New York.
It is also now the earliest surviving example
of the type nationally as the Castrol Building
in London has been altered and re-faced. But it’s
more than just an office block, it’s an integrated
newspaper production facility with the podium
and slab offices linked to a separately treated
but very fine attached printing works.
The main block and tower is
a reinforced concrete and steel structure with
glass and aluminium cladding panels on tower.
Beautiful materials are used: in the podium the
concrete beams are clad in mullions of black Argentine
granite enclosing fillets of white Sicilian marble.
The plan is based on the natural flow of newspaper
production: at the right-hand end on Colmore Circus,
a double-storey advertisement hall with directors’
offices above. To its left the entrance hall,
with the tower, comprising mainly lettable offices,
above. To the left, beyond a courtyard, the editorial
offices. To the left of these the printing works
with a composing room at top, a two-storey publishing
area below it, and a machine hall in a deep basement.
The outstanding dramatic feature of the exterior
is the tall open arcade which links the advertisement
hall to the editorial block across the front courtyard.
The printworks is treated deliberately
as a quite separate block from the offices, with
the simplest of links, perhaps reflecting the
method of composition employed by radical Arts
and Crafts architects such as W.R. Lethaby whose
influence on Birmingham was profound. It is a
steel stanchion and beam structure, partly exposed
and otherwise clad with white mosaic-clad pre-cast
concrete panels.
The interior has an entrance
hall with marble panelling, ad a two storey advertisement
hall with mezzanine floor accessed by staircase
with bronze anodised steel railings, and two storey
reporters’ room with library and conference
room in fully glazed gallery. When the advertisement
hall was first opened the windows were left open
at night and the third (top) storey of the podium
above it looked as if floating on pilotis above
a sea of light – a beautiful sight.
When it was built the Architects’
Journal gave it a twenty page write-up and said
that its ‘well considered exterior…
sets a new standard among some extremely dull
neighbours’ in Birmingham. Douglas Hickman
in his 1971 book on Birmingham buildings said
that it ‘set a new standard for commercial
building in the city centre’ and calls it
‘a remarkable achievement’. Alexandra
Wedgwood in ‘The Buildings of England: Warwickshire’
(1966) says that it is ‘marked by characteristic
good detail and good use of materials’. Madins
regarded it as one of their two most important
works – the other, ten years later, being
the Central Library.
The building is currently under
threat. Planning permission has been given for
a replacement office and printing works for the
Post and Mail on the edge of the city and there
are very strong rumours that the owners wish to
demolish the building and redevelop the site and
that the city planners favour demolition.
Sources:
Architects’ Journal vol.
139, 8 December 1965, pp.1385-1406.
Building, 3 June 1966, pp.66-71.
Douglas Hickman, ‘Birmingham’ (City
Buildings Series), Studio Vista 1970, pp.81-82.
Nikolaus Pevsner and Alexandra Wedgwood, ‘The
Buildings of England: Warwickshire’, Penguin
1966, p.123.
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