Pages from history
A town founded
on exhibitions
The UK’s Modern Letchworth, AKA the World’s First
Garden City, retains the spirit of two historical exhibitions
which led to its foundation. Vitali Vitaliev reports
Above: The historic
Cheap Cottages
Exhibition
Below: An example
of the types of home
that were on show.
Photos courtesy
Garden City
Collection,
Letchworth Garden
City Heritage
an exhibitions change
the world?
They certainly can,
and some have had
a profound effect on our world.
From the first ever public exhibition
in London in 1756; to the Great
Exhibition of the Works of Industry
of All Nations in 1851; the Exposition
Universelle of 1889 in Paris (with the
freshly built Eiffel Tower as one of
the exhibits); and the ice-breaking
(in the true Cold-War sense of that
word) American National Exhibition
in Moscow in 1959.
Each of them is worthy of a
separate story, but today I’d like to
focus on another much less known,
but no less momentous, exhibition.
Or rather two: the 1905 and 1907
Cheap Cottages Exhibitions.
Despite living – literally – on the
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Issue 1 2020
exhibition grounds, I am having
difficulty indicating the exact
location where they took place. This
is because the town they were held
in did not exist yet.
So as not to puzzle you any
further, let me clarify that I am
talking about Letchworth Garden
City - the town in Hertfordshire,
England, where I live. It is often
referred to by its historic nickname
- ‘The World’s First Garden City’.
Letchworth is probably the
world’s only town created entirely
by exhibitions. Its foundation was
a sizeable six-square-mile patch of
wasteland, purchased by Quakers
in 1903 and then laid out by the
architects Raymond Unwin and
Barry Parker (who later, after the
success of Letchworth, went on to
design Hampstead Garden Suburb).
Foundation.
It was designed in accordance with
the principles of Ebenezer Howard,
an idealistic thinker of the Victorian
era. Howard’s ultimate goal,
summarised in his book To-Morrow:
A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, was
to create a totally new and highly
liveable “industrial town with an
agricultural belt”.
Numerous posters, printed for
both exhibitions, promised “health
of the country and comforts of the
town” to potential buyers of the arts
and crafts cottages.
According to the plan, Letchworth
Garden City was to be laid out with
public buildings and shops in its
centre, industrial zones separated
from dwellings, and the whole urban
area surrounded by a 13 mile-long
green belt where the town’s residents
could stroll, ride and cycle. That plan
soon became reality.
So, how did the actual exhibitions
come about?
They both resulted directly from
a campaign for affordable rural
houses led by J. St. Loe Strachey, then
editor of The Spectator magazine.
He published an article “In search
of a £150 cottage” in the October
1904 issue, where he wrote of the
necessity to demonstrate new
construction techniques. Soon, with
the help of liberally-minded Scottish
surveyor Thomas Adams, a site for
the first Cheap Cottages Exhibition
was found near the village of
Letchworth – precisely half-way
between London and Cambridge.
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk