ABSTRACT
From 1933, when he arrived in Leeds, the new young director of housing began designing high-density estates of flats. Besides the West Street flats, he prepared designs for estates of over 1,000 dwellings at Sweet Street and Kirkstall Road, where clearances were effected by 1939. The only flats that he actually built, however, were those at Quarry Hill, the premier clearance site of the city and now, since the creation of Eastgate, one of the prime locations of central Leeds. The design was probably conceived as early as 1932. It was put out to tender in 1934 and the flats began to be occupied in 1938, but the estate continued to be built and occupied in stages, until 1941. It was never in fact completed. It contained a nominal 938 flats (some of which were never used as dwellings) and several public buildings, it covered twenty-six acres at densities of thirty-six dwellings, or an estimated 125 persons, to the acre. As well as resulting from the political struggles already described, it was the product of a long evolution of the home and domestic design.
