Nostalgia for the future: Exploring Croydon’s past and present through six buildings No. 1 Croydon Tower. Pic: Adrian Wallett In these virus-stricken times getting outside is, in fact, just what the doctor ordered. If you have exhausted your local parks or get a little down looking at denuded trees in winter, Croydon’s wealth of 20th-century modernist architecture offers the perfect escape into the borough’s history and, if you know where to search, a map to its present. The story of Croydon’s building boom began in the 1960s when a local councilor and Conservative alderman named Sir James Marshall consolidated power. Until 1978, unelected aldermen could be nominated by a council and determine policy direction without voter input.