Martyn Chalk
John Leslie Martin lived at 8 Pearson Park from 1934-1937 while he was Head of the Hull School of Architecture. He was a significant architect who went on to head the design team for the Royal Festival Hall, was chief architect for London County Council, and master planner for Leicester University among many other achievements. He was made Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University where the Martin Institute at Cambridge is still active. He was knighted in 1957. In Hull he is represented by the grade two listed Middleton Hall at the University of Hull.
In the late Thirties, there was growing interest in Surrealism, abstract and non–representational art in Great Britain, and in 1937 Martin, Ben Nicholson and N. Gabo co-edited `Circle, international survey of constructive art` which was published by Faber and Faber. Circle was intended to advance the ideas of Constructive art, architecture and design which had roots in Europe, especially in Germany and Russia.
The book was extensively illustrated and included material by artists and designers including Piet Mondrian, Le Corbusier, Barbara Hepworth, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Henry Moore and László Moholy-Nagy. Barbara Hepworth was involved in some of the work of page layout.
Although the Gabo family have said that much of the editorial work was done in London, the address `8 The Park, Hull` appears on the title page of the original edition. The intention was that Circle would take the form of a journal but Faber published it in hardback and no further editions were produced. Its continuing significance was recognised by a facsimile reprint in the USA in 1971 and a major exhibition and publication by Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge in 1982/3.
Martin`s further, if indirect, significance to modern art and to Hull can be seen in The Burlington Magazine of 1981 which reproduced photographs of Humber Dock Street taken in 1937 by the émigré Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy when Leslie Martin invited him to lecture at the School of Architecture. Sadly there is now no trace of the original photographs and it is believed that Moholy-Nagy destroyed the negatives. But even though the Burlington Magazine illustrations are small and of variable quality they show the area at its busiest.
The History Centre archives and site visits show how much the street has changed. There was surprisingly little direct wartime damage and the most obvious changes were made at the northern end during the development of Myton Gate and at Minerva Terrace where flats have been built. A large dockside crane that stood almost opposite Blanket Row was removed long ago and the storage sheds which ran the full length of the dockside went in the sixties. Their demolition and the subsequent development of the open paved area alongside the Marina changed the enclosed character of the street completely.
J L Martin, Architect 1908-2000. Wikipedia link
Circle, International Survey of Constructive Art. Wikipedia link
