Park Hill Flats (Sheffield)

 house, apartment building

The Park Hill Flats are a controversial, vast high-rise housing development built between 1957 and 1961. Originally it started out well with a lot of community spirit but went downwards in the 1980s. Locals consider it to be either a grim eyesore, a brave experiment that became badly managed, or both. The building was suggested for demolition on Channel 4's program Demolition, but the fact it was listed prevented this. Plans were therefore to renovate the flats and return it to its original glory. It is the largest Listed building in Europe.

The flats contained four integral pubs, a parade of shops and two schools. It was truly designed as a complete community. The names of four terraced streets lost to provide the land to build the flats are remembered in the names of each landing. The landings, famously were wide enough for a milk float to drive along each of them leaving the order at each resident's door. As the flats get less tall further up the hill, each landing (or street) meets the ground and the milk float was able to exit the complex via an exit ramp. Therefore the top two streets, Long Henry Row and Norwich Row, cover the whole of the complex, Hague Row covers two thirds and Gilbert Row appears only in the northerly block. Further to that, the bottom of the northern wing is so high that the bottom story meets the bottom of the inside pavement and forms an additional street called The Pavement which was a street of shops including a chemist, dentist, and a pub.

In May 2008, plans to renovate the flats into hotels an replace the grey cladding with multi-coloured cladding were approved. Work started in June 2008.