ABSTRACT
Buildings have a special fascination for the human mind. In a shifting world they are reassuringly solid. In the modern world the individual benefactor or patron is disappearing under the pressure of taxation. Between 1945 and 1959 local authorities had erected 2 million out of the total of some 3 million new dwellings which were built, and had provided about 3 million new school places. Capital expenditure on new housing and schools has dominated the building activities of local authorities. In the 1950s local authority building found its most interesting and vigorous expression in school building. The years between 1945 and 1960 have provided a succession of strains and stresses in local authority building. Gradually physical shortages diminished, systems of priorities and allocations were suspended and technical staffs were built up. The crisis of 1957 with the ‘credit-squeeze’, which was its outward expression, made more manifest the new change in emphasis in local authority building.
