Hotel planners just love Hackney

Loving Dalston ARCHITECTURE 2 Comments

Another hotel is planned for Dalston (or if you prefer, De Beauvoir; argue among yourselves).

The 357 Kingsland Road site is the triangular parking area of the Metropolitan House, built as a hospital in 1886 and now let as workshops and a hostel.

Like an unloved aunt, the Met seems overlooked

The hotel would offer 290 three-star rooms not far from Haggerston overground station and theEast London Line, that could run wealthy tourists to next year’s Stratford Olympics, albeit by an odd route (take the Ell to Canonbury then… oh, never mind).

Neale and Norden of Camden Town, North London, the architects, envisage conference rooms, a javascript:void(0)restaurant and a bar on the ground floor, along with underground parking.

Though planning application 2008/0622 was approved by Hackney council’s planning subcommittee in 2009, little sign of development is evident at the site, which poses the question, will the approval be used solely to boost a sale price rather than built a hotel? No hotel operator has publicly expressed any interest in the scheme.

Trivial but fascinating point: names of sponsors of the former hospital are carved in a wall plaque in the entrance hall of the Met

                                                   

 

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2 thoughts on “Hotel planners just love Hackney”

  1. I worked there in 1971-1972 as a house surgeon. Spent a fair bit of time in Ward A4 (the pub across the street). Loved the back garden. Happy memories.

  2. Lools like there is work going on there now. Bit late for next summer, though, isn’t it?

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