Hulme Crescents
53°27′59.6″N 2°15′12.6″W / 53.466556°N 2.253500°W
| Hulme Crescents | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Location | Manchester, England |
| Status | Adult-only from 1974, Abandoned in 1984 Demolished in 1993 |
| Category | High-rise, high density residential social housing |
| Construction | |
| Architect | Wilson & Wormersley |
| Style | Brutalist architecture |
| Demolished | 1993 - 1995 |
| Other information | |
| Governing body | Manchester City Council |
| Famous residents | Nico, Alain Delon, Mark Kermode |
Hulme Crescents was a large housing development in the Hulme district of Manchester, England. Hulme was the largest public housing development in Europe, encompassing 3,284 deck-access homes and capacity for over 13,000 people, but was marred by serious construction and design errors. Demolition of the Crescents, comprising 923 dwellings, began in 1993, 21 years after it was constructed in 1972.
The Crescents were described by the Architects' Journal as "Europe's worst housing stock... hideous system-built deck-access block which gave Hulme its unsavoury reputation." The Hulme Crescents had implications for new housing in Manchester and signalled the end of the streets in the sky idea popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s in the United Kingdom. After demolition, Hulme was redeveloped in the 1990s with a mix of low-rise to medium-rise housing.