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bronze plaque · Birmingham

Washington Irving

Placeholder for Washington Irving bronze plaque

The Argent Centre The Argent Centre is built on the site where Washington Irving conceived the Rip Van Winkle story. Designed by J.G. Bland for a gold pen manufacturer in 1863 employing 250 people. Florentine window tracing and multi coloured brick fascias make this Grade II listed building and excellent example of Italianate and polychromatic architecture popular in the 19th century. Directors had steam removed from the boilers for a Turkish bath and could also fence, play billiards, chess or recline on luxurious couches which lined their rooms. The premises were converted into small business units by Midland Industrial Assocation in 1988.

Inscription drawn from imported open data, awaiting original TributeLegacy editorial.

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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Data sources

Location records are drawn from open, licence-clean datasets, kept here with attribution and gratitude to the people who maintain them.

  • Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
  • Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
  • Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) — never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

Editorial descriptions, photography and tribute links are original TributeLegacy work, layered on top of the open data.

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