Examining the trade journals published soon after the completion of 65 Ladbroke Grove, it is clear that most viewed the building as a thoroughly progressive and welcome addition to the London skyline. A 1938 article in Building, for instance, gave the following glowing assessment: “Its light construction and elegant detail [provide] a diametric contrast to more heavily designed neighbours. In effect, however, and owing to the excellent proportions of the newcomer, this contrast is not so much startling as extremely refreshing.”

The Architects’ Journal from 29 December 1938 records the use of external materials: “Flint bricks, steel casement windows, tubular steel and wire mesh handrails. Wall adjoining gallery is of pale blue tiles and roof balustrade is of wired glass.”

A recent book describes the combination of materials at 65 Ladbroke Grove as “very well handled”. Furthermore, it portrays the building as a perfectly executed example of the Corbusian ideal: “The flats follow the same programme as Lawn Road [Wells Coates’s Isokon apartments] but with more architectural ability: the well-serviced anonymity of Le Corbusier’s machine à habiter.”

Maxwell Fry was one of the few prominent Modernist architects working in Britain during the 1930s who was actually British – most had emigrated from Continental Europe, where the Modern Movement originated. Among his most famous projects are Impington Village College in Cambridgeshire, Miramonte in Kingston-upon-Thames, and the Sun House in Hampstead. He also collaborated with Le Corbusier in Chandigarh. Number 65 Ladbroke Grove was designed when Fry was in practice with Walter Gropius, the founder of the famous Bauhaus School and one of the pioneers of Modern architecture.