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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Charles Holden/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 19:34, 11 March 2011 [1].

Charles Holden

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Charles Holden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): DavidCane (talk) 18:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Charles Holden was an early modernist architect who left a lasting architectural legacy in London. Starting out in the Arts and Crafts Movement at the beginning of the 20th century, he progressively simplified and stripped down his style to its bare elements. He was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects' highest award, the Royal Gold Medal, in 1936 and declined a knighthood on two occasions. In the 1920s he was one of the principle architects designing the war cemeteries in France and Belgium for the British war dead of the First World War. His largest buildings in London remain prominent examples of the 1930s monumental style, but he is probably best known for and had the longest lasting influence with his stations for London Transport. DavidCane (talk) 18:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Comment: I originally wanted to use Eitan Karol's definitive biography Charles Holden: Architect as a source, but the book cost £50 when published and no less now on the second hand market. Six months ago I placed an inter-library book request for it, but had given up hoping that a copy might turn up, so finished the article with the information available. Unexpectedly, the book has arrived today (thanks Kent County Library Service and University of Bristol). As might be expected, Karol's book contains a great deal of information on its subject. I will therefore be adding some new information to the less developed sections of the article (Early life, Family, War cemeteries and memorials and Town planning) and possibly more on architectural criticism and his architectural writing. This will mean some additional references being added and some possibly being replaced. I don't expect that this will have any detrimental affect on the condition of the article, whilst the changes are made.--DavidCane (talk) 17:42, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

Disambig/External Link check - no dabs or dead external links. A few external redirects which may lead to link rot; see them with the tool in the upper right corner of this page. --PresN 19:51, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Oughn't the ODNB ref to be formatted with {{cite encyclopedia}} rather than {{cite web}}? --Eisfbnore talk 20:15, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As I have cited the web edition of the ODNB rather than the print version, there is no volume number, page number or edition detail to include. The result is, therefore, exactly the same with the two cite templates. See below:
  • Cite encylopedia: Hutton, Charles; Crawford, Alan (October 2007). "Holden, Charles Henry (1875–1960), architect" (Subscription required). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33927. Retrieved 25 September 2010. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Cite web: Hutton, Charles; Crawford, Alan (October 2007). "Holden, Charles Henry (1875–1960), architect" (Subscription required). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33927. Retrieved 25 September 2010. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
--DavidCane (talk) 22:39, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment An interesting article which seems largely comprehensive. A couple of comments:

Early life

Early career

War cemeteries and memorials

  • Should the country described in the quote be explained - I would guess France of Belgium but I couldn't find this.
  • In what was was the war cemetery at Louvencourt "experimental"?
    • The IWGC tried out three different prototype cemetery schemes to see what they would cost to build. Louvencourt was one of these prototypes. They were all too expensive (each war cemetery was originally going to have a chapel, a "war cross" and a "great stone"), so they revised the specifications to eliminate some of the items in the smaller cemeteries and bring the costs down for the ones that followed. I will add some clarification.--DavidCane (talk) 00:44, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

London Transport

Generally I found it a very interesting read.— Rod talk 21:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment (followed by review later): I've read about the war memorial and war cemetery work Holden did, and I'm going to read through this article and leave some thoughts here. We should have a picture somewhere of one of his cemeteries, not just the memorials he did. Carcharoth (talk) 12:42, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Lead section: In one of the biographies I created recently, someone came along and put the postnomials in a template. The edit is here. The template is {{Post-nominals}}. I'm generally wary of wrapping article prose in templates, but this looked interesting. Should it be standard on biographical articles (this isn't really the right place to ask that), and should it be used on featured articles (I might ask at WT:FAC), and should it be used in this article? The lead paragraph mentions the WWI cemeteries but not the WWI memorials (admittedly, there were far more cemeteries than memorials). Should the WWI memorials be mentioned in the lead or not? In "simplified forms and massing", massing is a technical term here that I stumbled on. Is it possible to have a link or rephrase this?
  • Early life: It is possible to link Great Lever. Personally, I would then delink Bolton and Lancashire (all three are linked in the infobox). I would also say where St Helens is, as that gives an idea of how far they moved. Is a more specific link for 'draughting' possible? I think linking to 'Manchester' in 'Manchester architect' is overlinking. One general thing from this section - it is not clear exactly what qualifications he gained - can that detail be added?
    • I've linked to Great Lever, but think Bolton and Lancashire still need to be linked.
    • I've addded a note to indicate that St Helens is about 15 miles from Bolton.
    • His draughting classes weren't specific to any one field, although Karol says the class was called "Mechanical Engineering", but it was essentially draughting. I've linked to technical drawing.
    • Holden had no formal architectural qualifications - not uncommon at the time - and received most of his training on the job. Karol indicates that he did a class in Architectural history at the School of Art (grade: Excellent) and classes in "Brickwork and Masonry" and "Building Construction and Drawing" (first class honours in both) at the Manchester Technical School. These were vocational subjects like City & Guilds from which he won a £3 prize for the brickwork and masonry course. He also studied architecture at evening classes for three years at the Royal Academy School when he started working for Adams. I'll be adding a bit about the RA when I make some changes to the Early Career section.--DavidCane (talk) 23:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Family life: you don't link his wife's professions (nurse and midwife) but in the earlier section you linked his father's professions (draper and milliner) and his brother's profession (land surveyor). I would say for consitency, either link all or delink all, unless there is a reason to link them. I also disagree with linking the counties if there is an article on the towns. The link people are most likely to want to follow are the ones to the towns/cities. They can then go from there to the articles on the counties if they want to do so (this applies through the whole article). It might be worth mentioning in the article that Margaret Steadman was 10 years older than him - when they began living together he was 23 and she was 33. I also find the "Norbiton, Surrey (now Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames)" bit confusing. The point there is more that Norbiton was more rural at the time, but was swallowed up by the expansion of London in the early 20th century. What you really need to get across there is what Norbiton was like at the time - were they living in dense suburbia or gentrified country, or a small village? The austere family life and the 'betterment of the World' comment is intriguing. Is anything said anywhere about religion, or is it all from the philosophies encountered in the Manchester days? Is anything more known about the stepson Allan and how old he was? Was he around or grown up? This section ends with 'Charles and Margaret Holden lived at Harmer Green for the rest of their lives'. The rest of the article is all about the architectural career and legacy. It is normal to include a bit about the end of a subject's life in an article such as this. Standard would be his death date (already supplied in the lead and infobox), the location of his death (already in the infobox), possibly the cause of death if known, where he is buried, and whether he was survived by his wife (sorry, his partner - did she inherit despite not being married to him, for example). Also, in the rest of the article she is referred to as Margaret Holdman, though you say they never married? Did she change her name? Was she his common-law wife? I see that the article does say that Margaret died in 1954, but you have to scroll back up the article to find that out).
    • As I indicated in my Additional Comment above , this section is one I am going to expand a bit as I work through Karol's book. The information is a bit scattered, but I can say that most of the Holden's life style was philosophical. Holden had both grown up in the Church of England but found it unfulfilling and moved away from formal religion. Both were associated with the Quakers but not formal members.
    • Allan Steadman did live with the Holden's at Harmer Green and there is an interesting quote from Janet Ashbee about Charles and Margaret making their own clothes and a suit for Allan. What he did in later life Karol does not seem to say.
    • I didn't emphasis that Margaret was older than Charles as this didn't seem particularly important. It can be worked out quite easily from their dates.
    • Margaret pre-deceased him. Their attitude to marriage was that it was an artificial imposition by society. She was generally known as Mrs Holden, as most people did not know that they were not married. Common law marriage does not actually exist in England and the term wasn't used in their day.
    • In earlier drafts, the family life section was at the end of the article, but this seemed out of context, with most of what it contained relating to things that happened earlier in his life.
    • Holden was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Garden of the Friends Meeting House at Hertford. A memorial service was held at St Pancras church in June 1960.
    • Nurse and midwife are commonly recognised terms, but the meanings of draper and milliner are more obscure these days. I linked land surveyor because surveyor is a generic term and there are many specialisms (I'm a Quantity surveyor myself, but know little about the land surveyor's role).
    • I think it is quite normal to link both town and county in articles.--DavidCane (talk) 23:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Skipping ahead, the external links section could do with a bit of tidying. I thought that guidance existed on this, but maybe it doesn't. The best practices I've seen are ones where you tell the reader you are linking to a search rather than a website (the London Transport Museum Photographic Archive link) and where deep linking (the LTM photographic archive sublink) to an image is avoided - that image will have a proper page that can be linked to, such as this one or (for the one you linked to) this one (the hopefully permanent links are the 'Bookmark this page' links at left on that website). For National Portrait Gallery pictures, I would recommend using {{Npg name}} to format the external link and generate the right link. The RIBA link is a search as well, so some annotation for the external link should tell the reader that (is there really no guidance anywhere on this?). I also checked the sister projects, and Commons has a page commons:Charles Holden, as well as a category. Currently the article only links to the category, but if someone was prepared to expand and maintain the Commons page, that would be a good link to have (you can annotate things there where you can't in a category). Nothing found on wikisource.
    • I'll have a look at the external links formatting, though I don't think there is any guidance on this section. I have concentrated on the prose, but more full details on where the links go might be useful.
    • I'm not sure what the preference is on Commons regarding personal articles; it seems more appropriate to link to the category, rather than create an extra page just to give annotations to images.--DavidCane (talk) 23:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • A general point: should the mentions of listed status be capitalised? eg. Grade 1, Grade II, etc.?
  • Early career: I find semi-linking of terms within proper names very distracting. The example here is "King Edward VII Sanatorium". The name is 'King Edward VII Sanatorium', and if you need to link sanatorium, that should be done without interrupting the flow of the name, IMO. Similarly, linking to Cornwall in 'Cornish granite' is a bit much. Better in both cases would be redlinks if articles are needed. For "Dedicated to the memory of King Edward VII", maybe mention he died in 1910, as the design competition was 1909. FWIW, we have a picture of Oscar Wilde's tomb in Paris - if there is no room in the article, that would be something for the list article or for the Commons page (rather than the Commons category).
  • Another general point - when you quote what critics and others are saying, it is not clear unless the reader burrows around in the references, when these comments are being made. Are they contemporary to Holden, or people commenting closer to our time? I think it is important to distinguish these two main classes of comments (Pevsner and Service are writing in the 1970s, while others such as Karol in 2007, are writing much more recently). I would tend to give date context when mentioning a source by name in the article for the first time.
    • I don't think the distinction needs to be made. It is more normal to show the date in reference at the bottom of the page. If the quote was from someone other than the author of the cited source or at some other time, I have, where possible, indicated where and when the quote originates. --DavidCane (talk) 01:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • War cemeteries and memorials: You could link First World War once somewhere in the article, maybe the first time it appears in this section? I'll come back to this section later, as I have some books on this that might be of use. OK, I've put what I have on the talk page here. I think the only bit that could be added (after I discovered that Stamp misattributed the Royal Artillery Memorial) is the quote from Von Berg - as someone who worked with Holden, I think it would help to give that side of things. It seems that the early history of Holden with the IWGC is not that clear, and I can't suggest much to improve on what the article already says. I think what I will do here is work on List of buildings by Charles Holden and make sure the list of cemeteries is complete and sourced. It is possible that will need renaming in some way, but could the link here at least make clear that the list is not just buildings and also includes cemeteries? It might also be worth mentioning that Pearson, Holden's partner in the architectural firm, worked on the Royal Artillery Memorial.
    • I've linked First World War where first used, though it is arguably a common enough term not to need it.
    • The list of buildings was compiled as I found new items for inclusion. A series of detailed lists is included in Karol's book, so I was going to revise this to add quite a number of smaller projects and unbuilt projects not currently included.
    • The list of cemeteries was compiled by digging around in the Commonwealth War Graves website and is sourced to that already. Karol's book contains a list based on an IWGC original, although he and Guerst both indicate that this was prepared some time after the event and has obvious errors and omissions.--DavidCane (talk) 01:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • London Transport: The 'Day and Night' link is to an image. Is that acceptable? Other than that, this section is really good (as is most of the article). When I encountered the name 'Eric Aumonier' here, I thought it sounded familiar. Is the William Aumonier mentioned earlier a relative? The link behind 'Post-war austerity measures' is disappointing. I had expected an article on post-WWII austerity, but instead got a poor article on austerity.
  • University of London: "Others have described it as Stalinist, or as totalitarian due to its great scale." Should the links be to the articles on the -isms (in this case Stalinism), or is this a reference to Stalinist architecture and would that be a better link? I don't know if totalitarianism is also an architectural term, but if it is we don't have an article on it. The Senate House building does remind me of that massive building done in (I think) Romania - do you know the one I mean?
  • Town planning: The postnomials in the lead section include (presumably) 'Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute' (MRTPI). This is not mentioned in the town planning section, but it probably should be. You say "H M Enderby" - should the initials have periods after them?
  • Later life and retirement: it is not clear from the article at what point he retired or reduced his work. The ODNB entry does mention that Margaret became an invalid (and predeceased him). Maybe something could be said of his retirement? But it doesn't say where he was buried, unfortunately, though I do wonder where his money went!
    • Holden retired in 1957, so his retirement was relatively short, though he had been less involved in the running of the practice for some time before then. The house at Harmer Green and its contents were auctioned and £8,400 was left to relatives, friends and staff and £2,000 to charities.--DavidCane (talk) 02:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Recognition and legacy: "The RIBA holds a collection of Holden's personal papers and material from Adams, Holden & Pearson" - is it possible to source this and/or link to a page describing this collection? Also, some of the entries here, such as his being Vice-President of RIBA and a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission, fit uneasily in this section. It depends on whether they were honorary positions recognising him as a doyen, or whether they were roles where he worked hard in the service of his profession and its professional bodies? I'm also thinking that the section is a bit short - there must be more 'legacy' than that? One thing I find that can be mentioned is where obituaries were published. From the ODNB, it seems his obituary was published in The Times on 2 May 1960 - that is something I think is worth mentioning - as having your obituary published in The Times did (and still does) mean something. I also think that linking to an obituary or two is useful for a reader, even if the real meat of a biography comes from the books done later.
    • While the roles certainly required "work" of Holden, it certainly was an honour to be the Vice President of the RIBA and a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission and was recognition of his standing in his field.
    • In an earlier draft there was a legacy section, but I split it up, as I felt it was more relevant to include the narrative with the buildings themselves.
    • There were obituaries in a number of papers and periodicals, including the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the Architectural Review. These could be listed. I have a copy of The Times obituary, but it does not provide anything additional to the other sources, so it is not listed as a source. --DavidCane (talk) 02:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sources: I noticed the name of Charles Hutton in the sources. Is this the same Charles Hutton who was his assistant? It would be nice if there was some way to mention that, and whether any of those listed in the sources worked with Holden or not.
OK, I'm done here now. I enjoyed the article very much, and if the quibbles above are cleared up or some reason given why they can't or shouldn't be actioned, I'd be happy to support. Carcharoth (talk) 15:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the responses to the points I made. Rather than reply above, I'm going to pull out the points I think might still need consideration, and everything else in what I said should be considered resolved or not worth pressing the point, or will be addressed as more is added based on the Karol book (in particular, on his early life and family life, and retirement, and obituaries and memorial service). Anyway, the remaining points are:
(1) I'm still uneasy about the 'massing' word in the lead (possibly you missed that amongst the other things I said).
(2) I hope someone more active at FAC will comment on whether guidance exists for external links formatting.
(3) I'll try and do something with the Commons page at some point (it already exists, so no need to create it). There are some good examples to point to over there to show what I mean, but that's not really vital here.
(4) If linking to an image is acceptable, OK, but the reader should get some warning, as the link looks just like any other link.
(5) "Eric Aumonier was William's son" - this is a bit of human interest that might be worth adding, but maybe not if none of the sources mention it. The bit about Charles Hutton being the co-author of one of the sources is more difficult to work in, so probably not worth it.
(6) It was the Palace of the Parliament that I was thinking of.
Carcharoth (talk) 03:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Striking three of the points above (one was addressed, and I expanded the Commons page and redid the external links myself). I also created an article on the second of the memorials Holden designed, and linked that in to the two articles (the main one and the list). If the small amount of editing I've done around this topic allows, I'd be happy, as I said before, to support, and will do so formally below. Carcharoth (talk) 01:47, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support this nomination (see review and discussion above). Carcharoth (talk) 01:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC) For clarity, striking all addressed points above. 03:37, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Image review - 17 images used in this article - some are on Commons and some are not (this could be a problem in future, so it might be an idea to standardise the location of the images). The ones uploaded by a photographer under a free licence (or released en masse from a project like geograph.org.uk: see File:Belgrave Hospital for Children.jpg) are all fine. One was from Flickr and the licence has been checked by bot - that should probably be double-checked (File:Senate House, University of London.jpg). Public architecture in the UK can be photographed and freely distributed. Distribution of photographs of public architecture in France is less clear, but I don't think it is of concern here due to the nature of the work photographed (a war memorial - see File:NZ Memorial at Buttes 3467 (crop).jpg). That leaves 5 images to check - I'll comment in more depth on these other images below (all five are on Commons, not uploaded locally).

  • (1) File:Charles Holden by Benjamin Nelson.jpg - uploaded March 2009 - source and artist information provided on image page. For the record, this is one of the images that were part of the upload from the NPG that caused a fuss a few years ago. It has the warning label it needs to have, so it is fine as far as that goes (those issues are outside the scope of FAC). This is an artwork, and the artist died more than 70 years ago, so this image is fine to be used.
  • (2) File:Chapel at King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst.jpg - uploaded August 2010 - source information confirmed, and image page states that the photographer is not known. This image is secondhand from the BMJ. The original publication was in Architectural Review. Ideally, the issue it appeared in there would be checked for a photographer credit, but failing that, it is more than 70 years since publication and no author known, so this one is OK.
    • The "PubMed Central" archive which contains the article breaks the journals into individual PDFs. I have checked first and last PDFs for this edition of the journal here, and there does not appear to be any illustrations credits listed.--DavidCane (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • For this one, ideally you would find the issue of the Architectural Review, as that is more likely to credit the photographer. The BMJ may have republished the photo without properly crediting the photographer. As you've checked in likely places within the BMJ issue, though, that is probably good enough, though if you ever do find that photograph in The Architectural Review, see what they say. Carcharoth (talk) 03:29, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • (3) and (4) File:BMA Building July 1908 Strand Elevation.png and File:BMA Building July 1908 Agar Street Elevation.png - both uploaded September 2010 - same source information. Image page states that photographer not known, and checking the source, there is no photographer named and no credit. To be absolutely sure, you could check the rest of that issue to make sure the credits weren't provided elsewhere.
  • (5) File:Bristol Royal Infirmary Extension, 1912.png - uploaded February 2011 - stated source is a postcard scan in a book published in 2004. Is our copy another scan (directly from the 2004 book), or is it a copy of the Google Books scan of that book? (The link to Google Books provided on the image information page does not work for me.) Presumably the postcard was published in 1912 (can that be confirmed?) Any copyright information is likely to be on the back of the postcard (or is it the indecipherable squiggle under the caption on the postcard?). Either way, I'm not convinced here that the author is unknown. Did you check the 2004 book thoroughly to see if they provided any copyright information?
    • The postcard image was extracted from Google books (I use a proxy server to get access to the US version of Google books). The caption in the book says circa 1912. The illustration acknowledgement for the postcard in the book was just to Bristol Library's collection, not to a publisher.--DavidCane (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • It sounds like you can't reasonably ascertain the identity of the photographer, so the image is probably OK under the upload tag on Commons. If there are ever any problems on Commons, the tag to use here would probably be Template:PD-US-1923-abroad (the same applies to all four of images 2-5). Overall, I think the images are fine, and source and licence tags all check out following the points made above. Carcharoth (talk) 03:29, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, for these five images, the first one is fine, and the other four rely on the author not being known (if you want the image to be on Commons), or first publication being before 1923 (if you want to upload here under PD-US-1923). I'm not convinced the author is necessarily unknown for all of them, but they were all published before 1923, so at minimum they are OK as far as Wikipedia's image policy goes. Apart from that, I also checked the alt text, and though not a current requirement, the alt text here was excellent, and the captions used within the article were also good, as was the layout. Carcharoth (talk) 01:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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