Photograph by Seth Wales
The Glamorgan Building is situated in Cardiff’s prestigious civic centre in Cathays Park, on King Edward VII Avenue.
The building was acquired by the Cardiff University in 1997 and is now home to the School of Social Sciences and also to the Glamorgan Record Office. It is proposed that the Glamorgan Record Office will move to a new building near the soon to be constructed Cardiff City football stadium by the end of 2008.
Previously, the Glamorgan Building was the county hall for the Glamorgan County Council from 1889 to 1974 and Mid Glamorgan County Council from 1974 to 1996. The building houses the former Council Chamber and Committee Rooms.
Between 1974 and 1996, Cardiff was additionally the administrative headquarters for South Glamorgan County Council, but this authority had its own purpose-built county hall in Atlantic Wharf in Cardiff Bay, built in 1986/7. This was the first major public building that had been built in the Bay after the proposed creation of the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation.
The Glamorgan Building is the most architecturally distinguished building in the University’s care. It was designed by Vincent Harris OBE (1876–1971) and Thomas Anderson Moodie (1874–1948), who won the design competition for the building in 1909, the project was completed in 1911 and the building was opened in 1912. Outside the building, serving as reminders of the county’s source of wealth, are two groups of statues by Albert H Hodge (1875-1918), one representing navigation and the other coal mining.
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