Hightrees House  was erected in 1938 for the Central London Property Trust Ltd and  partly occupies the site of an old mansion of the same name. It was a rare London commission for the architect Richard William Herbert Jones (d.1965), better known for his hotels and other Art Deco seaside works at Saltdean and Rottingdean for the Saltdean Estate, in particular the Saltdean Lido (1937–8).

In plan the block comprised a double ‘E’ shape, with the shorter arms turned to face Nightingale Lane, the longer ones at the rear, running alongside Clapham Common. The main decorative elements to the brick façades are the white-painted cement or concrete curved balconies that occupy the centre and ends of the blocks, and which taper as they rise towards the upper storeys.

Inside are 110 flats, arranged off central corridors. These ranged from bedsits to four-room dwellings, the majority being three-room apartments. In tandem with modernity, every sitting-room had an eye-catching central ‘feature’ of electric heater, radio and clock as a substitute for the more traditional fireplace surround. Communal basement facilities included a restaurant, bar and swimming pool, and storage units for deckchairs were provided on the large open flat roof.

Opening so close to the outbreak of war, residents at first did not come in large numbers. As a result, the head lessees, a specially formed subsidiary (High Trees House Ltd), achieved a reduction in ground rent in 1941. After the war, when the block was fully occupied, the landlords took legal action to retrieve lost rent. The resultant court case proved to be a landmark in contract law, determining that the wartime agreement made the landlords’ legal rights unenforceable, and in so doing introduced the modern legal principle of 'promissory estoppel'.