Louie White-Taylor

Louie White-Taylor was an English architect, most famous for his work on the Old Bailey Football Ground, his brother was Stokes United chairman Stanley White-Taylor.

Early life
Born as Louie White in Southampton, England, the youngest of Archibald White and Winifred Taylor, he had two older siblings named Christina and Stanley. His mother abandoned him and his two siblings, leaving them in the care of their abusive father, until their maternal grandmother Lily Taylor brought them to live with her. Whilst living with his grandmother, he and his two siblings changed their surnames to White-Taylor, they occasionally saw their father, until he died of alcohol poisoning. As a child, White-Taylor used to draw, it was not until he was almost 20, that he began to develop building structure.

Stadium Design
White-Taylor's architect projects were initially considered functional rather than elegant, and were clearly influenced by his early work on industrial buildings. Typically, his stands had two tiers, with criss-crossed steel balustrades at the front of the upper tier, and were covered by a series of pitched roofs, built so that their ends faced onto the playing field, the central roof span would be distinctly larger and would incorporate a distinctive pediment.

His first project in England was the design and building of the Old Bailey Football Ground in Stokes, East Surrey.