Headquarters
BMA House has been the headquarters of the BMA since 1925, the Association being originally housed at 429 The Strand, London since its move to London. The building, now grade II listed, was originally designed for the Theosophical Society by Sir Edwin Lutyens with work commencing on 3 September 1911. However the start of World War I interrupted construction and the Army Pay Office took over the uncompleted building. After the war the Theosophical Society could not afford to finish the building, and it was sold to the BMA for £50,000, with the association later purchasing the freehold of the site from the Bedford Estates in 1962.
After purchasing the building, the BMA commissioned Lutyens to complete the building to its specifications. The building was officially opened by King George V and Queen Mary on 13 May 1925. However, plans were soon commissioned from Cyril Wontner Smith to extend the building to overlook Tavistock Square. The Association later commissioned Douglas Wood to design two more extensions on either side of Wontner Smith’s front entrance (build 1938-1950) and one at the back of the building (build 1959–1960).
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Famous quotes containing the word headquarters:
“If the national security is involved, anything goes. There are no rules. There are people so lacking in roots about what is proper and what is improper that they don’t know there’s anything wrong in breaking into the headquarters of the opposition party.”
—Helen Gahagan Douglas (1900–1980)
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—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“What does headquarters think these guys came over here for, a sewing circle? They go up playing for keeps. Cops and robbers with rocks in the snowballs. Brass knuckles and lead pipes and a roughneck conviction they can lick any man in the world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)