Electric House, Smith Street, Rochdale

Until 1924, domestic consumers used electricity mostly for lighting, but cheap supplies and the display of household electrical appliances in part of the Gas Department premises, at Drake Street, led to a domestic demand (apart from lighting) which increased steadily after1924, the figures rising from over 350 thousand units in that year to over 63 million units supplied for domestic use in the year ending 31 March 1930  with thousands of electric fires, cookers, irons, boilers and vacuum cleaners having been hired out or sold from the Electricity Showrooms up to this time. So great was the increase in demand that the Electricity Committee decided to combine its head offices, showrooms and domestic appliance stores in one central building and decided upon a site in Smith Street on land it already owned.

Electric House was built at a cost of £20,950 to the designs of the borough surveyor and architect S H Morgan and chief architectural assistant S G Eldred. And was officially opened on Monday 15 December 1930 by the then Chairman of the Electricity Committee (Councillor L.W. Taylor, JP). Of steel frame construction. The building was of five storeys including basement. The main entrance hall at the north-west corner of the Smith Street frontage with lift and staircase gave way to the main hall, fittings display room, model kitchen, bathroom and dining room, offices for showroom staff and stores for small electrical goods. Clerical, administrative and accounts staff occupied the first floor while the second floor contained the demonstration kitchen, model bedroom and washhouse with rooms for displaying radiators, water heaters and general appliances. The third floor was taken up by workshops and the installation department while a side entrance into Samuel Street contained a loading bay.

As a result of the nationalisation of the electricity industry under the Electricity Act 1947, in 1948 the Rochdale undertaking became part of the North Western Electricity Board which was responsible for the purchase of electricity from the electricity generator (the Central Electricity Generating Board from 1958) and its distribution and sale to customers. Electric House became a district office but this had closed  by 1972. Rochdale Corporation bought the building back from Norweb in 1974 with the ground floor showrooms leased back to Norweb. The building was demolished in 2007 to make way for the new bus station