Harry Weedon
| Harry Weedon | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1887 Birmingham, England |
| Died | 17 June 1970 (aged 82–83) |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Practice | Weedon Partnership |
| Buildings | Odeon Cinemas |
Harold William "Harry" Weedon (1887 – 17 June 1970) was an English architect. Although he designed a large number of buildings during a long career, he is best known for his role overseeing the Art Deco designs of the Odeon Cinemas for Oscar Deutsch in the 1930s. Influenced by the work of Erich Mendelsohn and Hans Poelzig – the Odeons "taught Britain to love modern architecture" and form "a body of work which, with London Underground stations, denotes the Thirties like nothing else".
Weedon was born in Handsworth, Birmingham, the son of a commercial traveller, and educated at King Edward's School in the city. He studied architecture at the Birmingham School of Art from 1904, before being articled to the architectural practice of Robert Atkinson. In 1912 at the age of 24 he was made an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects and went into partnership with Harold S. Scott, with whom he designed a cinema in Birchfield, completed in 1913, and several upmarket houses in Warwickshire.
The outbreak of World War I saw building work dry up, however, and in 1914 he volunteered as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, serving until 1917. On his demobilisation he set about re-establishing his architectural practice, but an affair with the wife of a neighbour resulted in a scandalous double divorce that destroyed his reputation, and he spent the following years in Leamington Spa working as a manager in the catering industry.
Weedon returned to Birmingham and to architecture in 1925, quickly building up his practice designing housing estates and commercial and industrial premises. It was his work in 1932 designing the enlargement of a factory in Hockley, Birmingham for the firm of Deutsch and Brenner that brought him to the attention of Oscar Deutsch – the factory's owner's son – who was in the process of building up his Odeon chain of cinemas and was dissatisfied with the interior proposed for his cinema under construction in Warley near Birmingham. Weedon was approached by Deutsch to complete the design, but at the time his office numbered only six staff and had nobody other than Weedon himself with any cinema experience, so the young Cecil Clavering was recruited to complete the work.
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