Langley Buildings

Langley Buildings is a home trade and mail-order warehouse and newspaper printing office, built in 1908 for J.D. Williams & Co. Its design exhibits a Baroque style. The building occupies a long, narrow rectangular plot bordered by China Lane, Back China Lane, and Hilton Street, with entrance blocks at each end and warehousing in between. The construction is primarily steel columns and girders with concrete floors, faced with brown and red faience and red brick, topped with a slate roof and skylights.

The building has a basement, two and three storeys, and an attic. The front facade is three bays wide and features a very ornate design. The lower level has channelled rustication in brown faience, above which is a moulded cornice over a centrally placed, curved oriel. Giant composite pilasters rise to an upper decorated cornice and a semi-circular pediment above the centre. Splayed corner doorways are situated under three-sided first-floor oriels. A central round-headed arch spanning the second and third floors contains three-light sash windows, with a panel above displaying "LANGLEY BUILDINGS." Flanking bays have round-arched three-light windows at the second floor and two-light windows above, all with pilastered surrounds, those at the top floor being round-headed with keystones. A chimney is located to the left of the pediment, and a mansard roof tops the structure. The left sidewall includes staggered stairwindows.

The rear facade, facing Hilton Street at number 36, is primarily brick with some brown faience, and is four bays wide in a simpler style. It incorporates giant pilasters, coupled doorways centered with faience surrounds, and a Diocletian window with a matching surround, arching over elliptical-headed windows in the flanking bays; the keystones of these windows form brackets for curved three-light oriels in the same material. Staggered stairwindows with stained glass in Venetian-style joinery are in the two central bays. A semicircular pediment adorns the central bays. Side walls are fifteen bays wide, with brick pilasters and iron-mullion tripartite sash windows.

The interior features a tiled entrance lobby and doors with Art Nouveau handles. Open-well staircases are located at both ends (the front staircase encircling a lift), both with cast-iron tuning-fork balusters and wrought-iron foliation in Art Nouveau style. Stained glass incorporating the red dragon of Wales is also present. The building was occupied in 1913 by J.D. Williams & Co. and by the Daily News Printing Office.