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Methodist Central Hall

Methodist Central Hall

Edwin Alfred Rickards

Photo: Gt-man · CC BY-SA 2.0 de · Wikimedia Commons

Location
London, England
Client / Owner
Wesleyan Methodists
Year
Completed 1911
Access
Tickets required
Style
Baroque

Methodist Central Hall faces Westminster Abbey on Storey's Gate. The Wesleyan Methodists built it from 1905 to 1911 on the site of the Royal Aquarium. Edwin Alfred Rickards of Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards designed it in a Baroque style with Edwardian elements. It is an early British example of a reinforced concrete frame and is Grade II* listed. Two planned towers were never built.

The self-supporting ferro-concrete dome over the Great Hall is reputedly the second largest of its type in the world. The hall seats 2,300. The Million Guinea Fund raised the money and the build cost 496,152 pounds.

The first session of the United Nations General Assembly met here in 1946. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was first performed here in 1968. Today it is a church and conference center.

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