English Heritage Blue Plaque for Sir Nikolaus Pevsner

Architectural Historian and Founder of the ‘Buildings of England’ series

Blue Plaque for Sir Nikolaus Pevsner The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902 – 1983) was commemorated today (5 November 2007) with an English Heritage Blue Plaque at 2 Wildwood Terrace, Hampstead, NW3, where he lived from 1936 until his death in 1983.  The house still remains in the ownership of the Pevsner family.

Pevsner was born in Leipzig to a family of Russian-Jewish origin.  He married Karola (Lola) Kurlbaum in 1923; Lola would later accompany Nikolaus on his exhaustive architectural tours of England.  He completed his doctoral thesis on the baroque merchant houses of Leipzig in 1924 and went on to become the assistant keeper at the Dresden Gallery and later a lecturer at the University of Göttingen.  It was at Göttingen that, after specialising in Italian Mannerist painting, Pevsner turned his attention to English architecture, making his first research visit to the country in 1930.

In 1933 Nazi race laws excluded Pevsner from his post and he left Germany for England.  He held a fellowship at the University of Birmingham and soon established himself as a proponent of Modernism and an emerging authority on the country’s visual scene; Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius (1936) hailed architecture as perhaps the most important of all the arts.  During these early years in England, alongside his work as a historian and writer, Pevsner earned a living as a fabric buyer for the furniture maker Gordon Russell.

Pevsner’s association with Penguin began in 1941 – shortly before he commenced his editorship of the Architectural Review (1942-45) – when he was employed by Allen Lane to edit the King Penguin series.  Since arriving in England Pevsner had found the “lack of a guidebook such a nuisance” and when Lane asked him what project he wished to embark on next, he ambitiously committed himself to producing a comprehensive guide to the buildings of England, with one volume covering each county.  An exhaustive rate of production commenced; three volumes of the Buildings of England appeared in 1951 and thereafter two books were published almost annually.  After Lola's death in 1963, Pevsner was accompanied on his next tour of inspection by one of his sons, and then by graduate students, while the writing was shared with a number of co-authors. In 1974, the 46-volume series was completed.  Since then, the Pevsner Architectural Guides – as they are now known – have been revised and expanded to include Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and are widely regarded as the most authoritative source for information on the buildings of Britain.

Dieter Pevsner said:  “When he arrived to settle definitively in England, my father was welcomed and helped by Quaker friends in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, and that was how he came to find Wildwood Terrace. The peace and the country aspect, with its farmhouse and open heath, so delighted him that he chose and rented No. 2 as his first English family home. He never moved again, or ever even contemplated moving. It was the ideal base for his work and the perfect setting for him and our mother to raise our family. He would have been delighted to think that the house itself would one day be honoured – and in the presence of three generations of his descendants.”

Pevsner’s reputation and influence endures, not least for the controversy his writings continue to provoke.  As well as lecturing at universities – he was professor at Birkbeck, Oxford and Cambridge – Pevsner was passionate about public education.  The Reith Lectures on The Englishness of English Art (1955), in addition to many other radio talks and public lectures brought Pevsner’s work to new audiences.  In 1958, at a time when Victorian architecture was deeply unpopular, he became a founding member of the Victorian Society, and was later to serve as Chairman (1963-76). Such was the influence of the inclusion of a building in the Pevsner guides that it was frequently saved from destruction.  Pevsner was appointed CBE in 1953; in 1967 he was awarded the RIBA Royal gold medal for architecture, and was knighted in 1969.

NOTES

• History of the Blue Plaques Scheme – The Blue Plaques Scheme has been running for 140 years. The idea of erecting 'memorial tablets' was first proposed by William Ewart MP in the House of Commons in 1863. It had an immediate impact on the public imagination, and in 1866 the Society of Arts (later Royal Society of Arts) founded an official plaques scheme. The Society erected its first plaque – to poet, Lord Byron – in 1867. The Blue Plaques Scheme was subsequently administered by the London County Council (1901-65) and by the Greater London Council (1965-86).
• Since 1986, English Heritage has managed the Blue Plaques Scheme and has erected around 250 plaques, bringing the total number to over 800. 
• The Blue Plaques Scheme is driven by public suggestion. In order to be eligible for consideration by the Blue Plaques Panel, a person must meet certain basic criteria: they must have been dead for twenty years or have passed the centenary of their birth, and a building associated with them must survive. English Heritage welcomes all nominations which meet these criteria. For more information, call 020 7973 3794 or see our website: www.english-heritage.org.uk/blueplaques