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I thought this would be a slightly different subject but one that might interest some visitors as Whitehall is the Mordor or Pentagon of British Defence efforts depending on your view.
Like so much else in the 60s it was planned in the early part of the decade to rip out the old buildings of Whitehall notably the Foreign Office, old Home Office and various other bits and replace the whole area with a series of concrete buildings looking like Aztec temples.
http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/savingacentury/savingacentury.htm
For a picture of what this lunacy might have looked like and more info on how it was stopped see the link above.
However, the architects were not to be foiled. The Home Office Building in Queen Anne's Gate is one example of what they got up to as are the old Department of the Environment blocks in Marsham Street. Things got so bad that by the late 60s they were suggesting that the whole of Parliament and Whitehall be moved out to a site near Windsor (handy for Heathrow, the M4 to ths Shires and EIIR). New capitals like Brazilia and later Abuja or Quezon City were all the rage. I have been trying to track down an article in one of the Newspaper colour magazines (Times or Observer) from the late 60s or early 70s that showed an elaborate model of the proposed development looking like something out of Logan's Run or TV 21. Fortunately we were already on our uppers by this time and the likes of Sir John Betjeman had turned the tide in favour of preserving the relics of Empire in Whitehall.
This of course meant the survival of the old India Office whose paintings so apalled Robin Cook, Labour's Foreign Secretary, with their Colonialist pretensions that he banished them. However, his decision to replace one of them with a picture of his hero, Oliver Cromwell, was perhaps not such a tactful move, as one of his first visitors was the Ambassador of the Irish Republic...
If anyone has a pile of old Colour mags or knows where they might be found, I would love to add this Berkshire Brasilia to my what if UK of 1975
Like so much else in the 60s it was planned in the early part of the decade to rip out the old buildings of Whitehall notably the Foreign Office, old Home Office and various other bits and replace the whole area with a series of concrete buildings looking like Aztec temples.
http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/savingacentury/savingacentury.htm
For a picture of what this lunacy might have looked like and more info on how it was stopped see the link above.
However, the architects were not to be foiled. The Home Office Building in Queen Anne's Gate is one example of what they got up to as are the old Department of the Environment blocks in Marsham Street. Things got so bad that by the late 60s they were suggesting that the whole of Parliament and Whitehall be moved out to a site near Windsor (handy for Heathrow, the M4 to ths Shires and EIIR). New capitals like Brazilia and later Abuja or Quezon City were all the rage. I have been trying to track down an article in one of the Newspaper colour magazines (Times or Observer) from the late 60s or early 70s that showed an elaborate model of the proposed development looking like something out of Logan's Run or TV 21. Fortunately we were already on our uppers by this time and the likes of Sir John Betjeman had turned the tide in favour of preserving the relics of Empire in Whitehall.
This of course meant the survival of the old India Office whose paintings so apalled Robin Cook, Labour's Foreign Secretary, with their Colonialist pretensions that he banished them. However, his decision to replace one of them with a picture of his hero, Oliver Cromwell, was perhaps not such a tactful move, as one of his first visitors was the Ambassador of the Irish Republic...
If anyone has a pile of old Colour mags or knows where they might be found, I would love to add this Berkshire Brasilia to my what if UK of 1975
