Campaign groups ask Historic England to list YMCA building

A heritage charity and a London campaign group have applied to list the building formerly home to the world’s first YMCA following its closure earlier this year.

The Twentieth Century Society and the ExY Club have filed submissions with Historic England in an effort to protect the Brutalist structure on the of Great Russell Street and Tottenham Court Road.

A spokesperson for the Twentieth Century Society said the listing would ensure that “whatever the future may hold, [the building’s] undeniable architectural qualities would endure.”

The former Central YMCA was closed in February after being sold late last year to real estate firm Criterion Capital.

Central YMCA chief executive Ryan Palmer wrote to its members at the time that due to pressures such as local demographic changes and rising site maintenance costs, “it has become clear that the cost of operations at the Club are now not being covered by the number of members the Club can sustain. Therefore, after much consideration and with the best interests of the charity and our beneficiaries at heart, we have concluded the sale of the 112 Great Russell Street site.”

The Central YMCA was the world’s first, opening in 1844, and had been operating from its Great Russell Street base since 1977.

It was Central London’s largest gym and wellbeing centre with facilities including a 25-metre swimming pool and an arts studio.

A petition to save the premises received more than 8,000 signatures and Camden Council supported calls for a pause to allow time to investigate alternative ways of running the facility.

Prior to it being closed the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) spoke to several residents who used the club.

Doron Jacobs said he started attending around two-and-a-half years’ ago after it had been recommended by a friend. “It’s a huge loss really,” he said. “I relatively recently retired and I was looking for something to do with my health and fitness, and a friend who attends suggested I should go to the YMCA.”

Jacobs added the YMCA was more than a gym, likening it to a community centre. “My overriding feeling is this is just another facility in London being lost in the interest of tourists and big businesses rather than the local communities.”

Efforts to prevent the YMCA’s closure however proved futile and it was shut as planned on 7 February.

‘Considerable historic and architectural interest’

The Twentieth Century Society and the ExY Club, formerly the Save the YMCA Club Committee, have since applied to Historic England to have the building listed.

The ExY Club’s detailed submission, which is intended to work alongside The Twentieth Century Society’s, draws attention to the distinct design of the building informed by its purpose as a community and leisure complex.

“The building is the subject of a recent sale which may alter the interior layout and change the purpose and nature of the building’s historic function — a function that is intrinsic to its historic, communal and architectural value,” the application states.

“As a large building with a variety of uses and multiple occupancy, the site is vulnerable to adaptation and change without any oversight of the impacts on the building holistically. This is the nature of large-scale urban buildings, but the building does face a considerable risk from erosion of its historic form and function and this is considered a threat.”

The Twentieth Century Society’s submission opens by calling for the listing of the Great Russell Street site “on account of its considerable historic and architectural interest”.

“The YMCA is a colossal and fantastically robust 1970s Brutalist concrete megastructure, prominently located in Central London,” the submission reads.

“It is a vast and multi-layered building, built to accommodate the YMCA community and provide a lively social centre as well as a variety of sporting facilities. This impressive post-war building survives in very good condition, externally and internally.”

A spokesperson for The Twentieth Century Society told the LDRS: “The former Central YMCA is a colossal and multi-layered example of a post-war concrete megastructure, with a bold geometric design that’s simply unmissable as you traverse Tottenham Court Road.

“Bloomsbury’s Brutalist landmark has clear historic interest as the site of the world’s first YMCA, and its status as an Asset of Community Value demonstrates its importance to the members and community that frequented it until recently. Recognising the building with national listing would ensure that, whatever the future may hold, its undeniable architectural qualities would endure.”

In a written comment, a spokesperson for the ExY Club detailed three key points informing their application:

• “[The building] stands almost unaltered as an outstanding example of Brutalist architecture in the centre of our capital city. Its rarity as a piece of British Brutalism is amplified by its uniqueness as a fully functioning suite of inter-related spaces. The combination of accommodation blocks, street frontages and an underground multi-purpose leisure centre with the UK’s largest ‘hanging’ swimming pool, in a highly urban setting, makes the building unique in a UK context.
• “The unusual original brief for a largely underground ‘community centre’ with a series of ‘town halls’ levels, where each activity can be seen by all participants engendering inclusivity, was brilliantly realised by the architect and has worked for over 50 years. The many moving testimonials on its closure demonstrate all of the foregoing.
• “It has an extraordinary social history, from the CYMCA’s 1924 basketball team, the first to win at the Olympics; the establishment of the ‘League of Coloured People; pioneering music with sports activities; the early positive health and strokes programmes, and much else.”

A Historic England spokesperson confirmed it is in the process of assessing the Central YMCA building for listing, adding: “In due course we will submit our advice to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), who will then make the final decision on the case.”

Criterion Capital was founded by property entrepreneur Asif Aziz and owns some of the West End’s most iconic buildings, such as the London Pavilion and the Trocadero by Piccadilly Circus.

The Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square recently had a much-publicised dispute with its landlord Zedwell LSQ, a subsidiary of Criterion Capital, over a demand to include a break clause it claimed would threaten its existence.

The belief is the Central YMCA building is to become part of the Zedwell hotel chain. An underground Zedwell already operates from 112 Great Russell Street.

Criterion Capital was approached for comment but did not respond.

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