Sir Henry Tanner (1849–1935) was a prominent British architect during the late 19th and early 20th century, working for HM Office of Works.
History
Tanner was born in
St Pancras, London
St Pancras () is a district in north London. It was originally a medieval ancient parish and subsequently became a metropolitan borough. The metropolitan borough then merged with neighbouring boroughs and the area it covered now forms around ...
1849 to Robert Tanner, a master carpenter and Elizabeth Selby. He attended the Royal Academy before gaining work experience on building sites in Wiltshire and Surrey.
He joined the practice of architect Anthony Salvin, before moving in 1871 to HM Office of Works as a Clerk of District B. In 1872, he married his first wife Lucy Gardner, with whom he had five sons and two daughters, one of whom was the renowned architect Henry Tanner.
In 1873, he was promoted from Clerk to First Assistant.
In 1877, he had moved to the London District Office of Works, but this did not last long and in 1882 he moved to Leeds where he took up the position of Surveyor, second class. This was a short move, and Tanner returned to London two years later to take up the position of Surveyor, First Class, with responsibility for the Post & Telegraph services.
Unfortunately in 1889 his wife Lucy died, and in 1894 he married Emily Sophia Leal.
In 1891 he became a fellow of
RIBA, and listed numerous buildings he had designed including York Post Office (1885) and
Birmingham Post Office (1889-91).
He was also awarded the RIBA Tite prize for Classical Architecture in 1878. His designs were normally French Renaissance in style. In 1898, he took over as the Principal Surveyor of the London Office of Works.
In 1899 he started one of his biggest projects,
Post Office Savings Bank
Post Office Savings Bank is a name used by postal savings systems in several countries, including:
* New Zealand, later renamed the PostBank
* United Kingdom, later renamed the National Savings and Investments
* Singapore, later renamed POSB Bank
* ...
in West
Kensington
Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London.
The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...
. Other projects completed under his guidance were the
Land Registry in Lincoln's Inn Fields and the West Extension (now known as the West Green Building) at the
Law Courts in
The Strand, London.
In 1904, Tanner was knighted by
King Edward VII, and also chaired a RIBA committee on the use of reinforced concrete, a substance that he used extensively in his last big project the King Edward Post Office Building (1907–10).
He served in 1910–12 as President of the
Concrete Institute (later to become the
Institution of Structural Engineers).
In 1913, Tanner retired from the office of works but joined the practice of his son, Henry Tanner, where he worked until his death in 1935.
Works completed after the office of works include the
Dickins and Jones department store in Regent Street. His son Henry Tanner was famous for the design of the Park Lane Hotel in London, and the redevelopment of Oxford Circus.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tanner, Henry
Architects from London
1849 births
1935 deaths
Companions of the Imperial Service Order
Companions of the Order of the Bath
People from St Pancras, London