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Herbert Baker was appointed architect to the Bank of England in 1921. Despite having never built a bank, nor being familiar with the City of London, Baker was selected by the Rebuilding Committee on the basis of his reputation and merit, unlike many of his predecessors who had had prior connections to the Bank.
An example of preservation modernism, his design was deemed controversial by many at the time. It is now registered as a Grade 1 listed monument, and remains protected under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990.
‘For everything in the new Bank is highly symbolic. Indeed, it is a hotch-potch, a pasticcio, a patch-work of symbolical odds-and-ends.’ [John Hargreave, Montagu Norman, 1942]