Sheriff Hill
This led to the building of the first council housing estate in Gateshead. Alderman Hodkin laid the foundation stone on 27 October 1920; as work commenced the Alderman demonstrated the authority's concerns, telling the local newspaper that: "we can build houses, but we cannot build homes. Only the people themselves can do that and I hope that the spirit of ‘esprit de corps’ will prevail and this will be a model estate" Demand was highthere were 427 applicants for the first twenty eight houses builtand the council built further tracts of housing in a broad triangle between Sodhouse Bank, Ermine Crescent and The Avenue, although central government withdrew its promised funding. By 1936, most of the social housing available as of 2012 was in existence and provides accommodation to over half of the population of the suburb.
Glaspaleis
Peter Schunck compared the structure of the building with a ship, floating on uncertain ground. The foundation is basically a concrete trough, that can 'give a little' if any mining shafts were to be dug under it. This 'ship' would then never be able to capsize. During construction, the moat of the old Roman settlement Coriovallum was uncovered, which was the reason to lay the foundation deeper than originally planned. Inside the old walls the subsoil was firm, but outside them it was very bad. Building such a structure on such ground in a mining area was deemed too risky and the ground was cleared until a single layer of equal overall weakness was encountered, a 12 m thick sand layer. This sand is generally considered a bad foundation soil, but in a mining area it is a good choice because it flows and 'gives' evenly in case of a cave-in in a mine below it. Still, Peutz decided that the soil pressure should not exceed 1 kgf/cm² (100 kPa). So for the foundation he used a reinforced concrete slab extending under the whole building. This 50 cm thick beamless foundation slab is mushroom-shaped.