Holborn Town Hall

The facility, which was designed by William Rushworth in the French Renaissance style opened as a library in 1894.[1] Following the creation of the Metropolitan Borough of Holborn in 1900, consideration was given to expanding the old Holborn Town Hall on Gray's Inn Road but this proposal was rejected on the grounds that the old building would be difficult to adapt.[2] Instead the new library building on High Holborn was extended to the west to the designs of Septimus Warwick and H. Austen Hall in a similar and symmetrical style to create a town hall for the new borough in 1908.[2] The First International Syndicalist Congress, a meeting of European and Latin American syndicalist organizations, was held at the town hall from 27 September to 2 October 1913.[3]

The building on High Holborn ceased to function as the local of seat of government when the enlarged London Borough of Camden was formed in 1965[4] and was subsequently converted for alternative uses including restaurant use (on the ground floor) and offices (above).[5]