Northbrook College, Worthing

I snapped this modernit building in Worthing and I know nothing about it.

It is clearly named Northbrook College, but their website doesn't show it as one of their campus buildings.

Update: @artistsmakers on Twitter has let me know that this buildng was recently demolished after the college sold it to developers. It was an Art Moderne frontage added to a Victorian art college.

Flats, Worthing

This wonderful streamline Art Deco entrance belongs to a large block of flats in Worthing, in the south of England.

No doubt it once had a flagpole as can be seen in the entrance to the commercial part of the building around the corner.

I don't know what business originally occupied that part of the building but as you can see back in 2000 it was a Blockbuster Video store and as far as I know it still is.

The raw concrete and upper floors of the flats have been painted white since I was there as can be seen in Alan Cooper's 2006 photo on http://www.geograph.org.uk.

There would be a nice sense of irony if this had once been a cinema, now a Blockbuster Entertainment store but it looks more like a showroom with lots of glass on both floors.

Connaught Theatre, Worthing

The Connaught Theatre in Worthing, on the south coast of England, is an earlier building that received a deco makeover in the 1930s.

According to Cinema Treasures, it was originally built as the Picturedrome in 1914. Designed by Peter Dulvey Stonham with a refurbishment by A T Goldsmith in 1933 which gave the building it's Art Deco facade.

The Picturedrome only remained open for a further 2 years closing in June 1935 but by September that year the Worthing Repertory Company took over the building calling it the Connaught Theatre.

The facade is asymetrical. The central entrance with two flagpole on the roofline above the main doors. A narrow horizontal band of windows on the second storey and shorter bands of windows on the lower floor set at different levels. The windows on the left being lower that those on the right.

On the right there is a side entrance built into a curved section of the building with a great curved metal framed window. The other end of the building truncated at the end of the rectangular wing.

Today, the Connaught Theatre combines films and live shows and will stage a live production of 'Allo 'Allo! in October 2008. It probably does get lamer than that, I just can't think of it at the moment.