Ferndale Avenue, Wallsend Library

Public library 1965-6 designed by Harry Faulkner Brown of Williamson, Faulkner-Brown & Partners of Newcastle. Lightweight steel-framed glazed building. White plastic laminate where bookshelves abut the windows. Buff brick walls to rear offices. Raised platform of rilled concrete surrounded by granite setts in a diagonal dog-tooth pattern. Roof fascia of corrugated aluminium. Single-storey flat-roofed rectangular building with central square landscaped courtyard. Fully glazed vestibule, with large open-plan adult and children's libraries on one side and a small quiet room (now IT room) on the other side. A meeting and newspaper room, latterly used as exhibition space and a reference library. WCs and staff area to the rear. The entrance is marked by a shallow flagged ramp forming a drawbridge over the granite setts. This is flanked by a pram park on the left-hand side and a cycle park on the right-hand side with slots for seven bicycles. Either side of the glazed double doors are glazed panels with the word LIBRARY in their mid-rail. The central courtyard is fully glazed with indented aluminium fascia. In the centre is a square raised concrete planter surrounded by a pavement of blue bricks. In the north-east corner of the planter is a slender square concrete column on which is set a bronze head of an ancient Roman sculpted by Murray McCheyne.