In 1933 the Council set up a Castle Committee to consider how the land it had acquired might best be used. Commercial development being precluded by the vendor's request, health clinics and municipal offices were suggested.

Consultation with the municipal departments followed. Some, such as Electricity (York had its own power station by the Foss), urged the advantage of remaining 'over the shop'; others, such as the Treasury, could not anticipate moving for some years. A phased development was decided upon. In 1935 a competition for these buildings attracted 46 entries. The winning entry by Donald H.McMorran, A.R.I.B.A. was put to tender.

McMorran's design grouped the clinics - for infant care, school children, social workers, &c. - around a glass-roofed waiting hall. A TB clinic at the rear had a separate entrance from the riverside. The aim was to make a single-storey bijou block [centre] which would not challenge the Castle Museum [right].

The three-stoey building to the north [left] distantly echoed the Castle Museum. It had offices for municipal departments and several committee rooms. (Much of the city's administration was then by committee.) These were wrapped around a single-storey core housing a large General Office and a Payment Office. These were to be, initially, glass-fronted to the Foss, and could be entered from the riverside. In a later phase they would be enclosed by offices for the City Treasury and Engineer's Departments.

Services could be hidden by an arcade wall connecting the offices and clinics. Here a large pram shelter from which either building could be accessed was particularly convenient: the Assistance Office would only be a few paces north; Infant Care would be a few paces south.

McMorran suggested a 'green' extension of Castlegate by an alley of trees. The new buildings would be fronted with grassed 'terraces' echoing the paved terrace of the Castle Museum. The Foss frontages were treated similarly. Clifford's Tower is shown here still with its old retaining wall and SW entrance, though the proposed extension of the motte is also shown. After consultation with the Royal Society of Arts, the Eye of York was retained as a lawn.

McMorran had to revise his design radically after being appointed to the scheme. The brief was extended to include a youth employment centre, more clinics and more space for the corporation's departments. The single-storey clinic block suffered by enlargement to two storeys, and the north block was elaborated with a portico and steeple, to which the County Committee objected. (McMorran was not informed officially for some years that the County retained an interest in the site. He eventually proposed a grotesque allegorical 'Fountain of the Ridings' to placate them.)

Although the development was to be phased, the advantage of constructing all of the foundations together was urged. The new municipal offices on the Castle site would have been on a new road to the Hungate area. A Ministry of Health inquiry was held on 9^th September 1937 into the application by York Corporation to borrow £152,800 for the first phase of MacMorran's design. This work was begun in 1938, in the shadow of war. Correspondence between the architect and the Council shows the difficulties. Ought there to be decontamination units in the basement? The design would have to be revised with supplies of steel becoming limited. Construction was eventually halted in 1940. The incomplete work was requisitioned by the Air Ministry and Army. Following derequisition in 1946 it was never resumed. The visible portions (see previous page) were subsequently hidden beneath a car park. The McMorran buildings passed into local mythology as a regional centre of government for the atomic bomb age.