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London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

WC1, Gower Street, School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

This listed building was designed by Vernor Rees in 1926, one of the first steel-framed buildings ever erected. The balconies are decorated with gilded bronze insects and animals involved in transmitting disease - all charming and beautifully photographed at Ornamental Passions where you will also find more info on the building and its decorations. Incorporated into the design is a frieze of 23 names around the top and above the entrances. The LSHTM website has a page about this frieze and the men commemorated - they are all men. The names were selected by a committee which chose to exclude Florence Nightingale (the only woman on the short-list) due to the length of her name, but they found room for Pettenkofer.

Walking anti-clockwise around the building the names read:
On the Gower Street façade, the first 3 being above the entrance:
Pringle
Sydenham
Lind
Gorgas
Laveran
Reed

On the Keppel Street façade:
Ross
Farr
Jenner
Shattuck
Chadwick
Simon
Manson
Lister
Pasteur
Koch
Bruce

On the Malet Street façade, the last 3 being above the entrance:
Parkes
Leishman
Lewis
Frank
Pettenkofer
Biggs

In 1914 this site was fingered for the new National Theatre, but it was not to be. In 2016 we visited an exhibition in this building, about the Shakespeare Hut. The hut was conceived by Israel Gollancz, Professor of English at King’s College and keen promoter of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre. The site was acquired in 1914 to commemorate the 300^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death by building a National Memorial Theatre.

But the war intervened and prompted the suggestion that the site should instead be used as a YMCA for New Zealand service men, with a stage for entertainments. The Hut was designed in a, for once, highly appropriate Tudorbethan style by W. Charles Waymouth. Opened on 11 August 1916, it was by all reports well-used and very popular. 1920-1924 it was rented for use by the Indian YMCA and this generated funds for the touring New Shakespeare Company. It was then demolished to make way for the LSHTM. See Shakespeare Hut (2021: now a dead link) for pictures and more information.

From LSHTM: "Twenty-six {a slip, they mean 23} names formed the original frieze on the exterior of LSHTM's Keppel Street building. Mystery surrounds the reasoning behind their selection which was made by a committee of unknown constitution who pondered deeply on which of the names of the great and good in the fields of hygiene and tropical medicine merited such public acclaim. The names were also all those of men. So, to celebrate our 120th anniversary in 2019 we gained special permission to add three new names to the façade of our Grade II listed building to reflect the diversity of global talent in public health, medicine and the health sciences. The names—selected from suggestions made by our staff community—are all from an era in keeping with the building, which opened in 1929."

The three panels were added in 2019, one storey up from Pringle, Sydenham and Lind, respectively:

Nightingale
Ball
Sklodowska-Curie

We thank Ricci de Freitas for drawing the 2019 additions to our attention.

See the London School of Tropical Medicine for the origins of the LSHTM.

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