Date Published 18 June 2026
Spotlight on: Art Deco🎭
The interwar years of the 1920's and 30's were heady times in Great Britain. The boys were back from the trenches and working in exciting modern industries. The girls were doing things that would've landed their Victorian mothers in jail (voting, wearing short dresses) with abandon. Young people were increasingly striking out on their own before marriage and demand for smaller dwelling spaces and dense urban housing was exploding like never before. 🎭
Aided by new technology, developers were more than happy to meet the requirements of this rapidly changing world and its bold new lifestyles. Thus, high rise in apartment buildings began springing up all over Greater London.🎭
A century on, buildings from this period can still be seen everywhere and, here in Highgate, we're blessed with several fine examples of the era's most iconic architectural style: Art Deco. 🎭
What is Art Deco?🎭
Art Deco is an aesthetic movement that captured the interwar period's simultaneous obsessions with the past and future in visual form. The aesthetic draws inspiration heavily from both the natural world and ancient Egypt, which were areas of particular fascination thanks to Darwinism and the recent discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. At the same time, it evokes a technologically advanced future of industrial efficiency and unlimited possibilities. 🎭
Broadlands on North Hill ticks nearly every Art Deco box with its radiant front door and Egyptianesque doorframe, dramatic verticality and round edges.🎭
The aesthetic was massively popular and incorporated into everything—buildings, furniture, paintings, posters, clothing, jewellery, appliances and more. Basically, if it had a visual design element to it, there was an Art Deco version of it. 🎭
Highcroft on North Hill features classic Art Deco balconies and symmetrical brickwork that serves both a practical and decorative purpose.🎭
