Poplar Town Hall


Poplar Town Hall is a municipal building at the corner of Bow Road and Fairfield Road in Poplar, London. It is a Grade II listed building.

History

The building was commissioned to replace an aging mid-19th century municipal building with a distinctive octagonal tower and dome and mosaic detail on Poplar High Street which had become the headquarters of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar in 1900. The old building on the High Street had been the scene of the Poplar Rates Rebellion, led by George Lansbury, which resulted in 19 councilors being put in prison. The council sold the old town hall to a developer in 2011 and it was subsequently converted into a hotel.
The site for the new building had been occupied by a 19th century vestry hall. The new building, which was designed by Culpin and Son in the Moderist style and built in the form of a trapezoid, was completed in December 1938. The Builders by sculptor David Evans is a frieze on the face of the building, unveiled by Lansbury on 10 December 1938: the Portland Stone panels commemorate the trades constructing the Town Hall and symbolise the borough's relationship with the River Thames and the youth of Poplar. It was proclaimed by the council to be the first town hall to be erected in the modernist style but ceased to function as the local seat of government when the enlarged London Borough of Tower Hamlets was formed in 1965.
After being used as workspace by the council until the mid-1980s, the town hall was converted for commercial use in the 1990s and subsequently used as a business centre.