Former Colonial and United States Mortgage Company Office

Former Colonial and United States Mortgage Company Office

A former mortgage company office built between 1884 and 1886, designed by Robert Clamp of Hull and Alfred Gelder. The building is Grade II listed and was substantially altered in the late 20th century. It is built in the Renaissance Revival style.

The building is constructed of ashlar with a slate roof. It occupies an L-shaped corner plot, with its south elevation facing Whitefriargate and its east elevation facing the Land of Green Ginger. The main entrance is a canted bay on the south-east corner.

The building rises three storeys plus an attic. The exterior is ornamented with rusticated and banded pilasters, elaborately decorated entablatures and moulded cornices throughout. The mansard roof is covered in slate and features five attic dormers and four ashlar chimney stacks—two positioned at the gable ends and two on the ridge. The stacks are decorated with plain pilasters and moulded cornice and coping.

The single-bay canted south-east entrance has a wide early 21st-century shopfront that wraps around both return elevations. Above this rises a two-storey round-cornered and canted bay window with decorated entablature on each floor. The first floor contains three mullion and transom windows with one-over-one sashes and plain glazed top-lights. The second floor has three mullion windows with one-over-one sashes, with a decorated wrought-iron balcony supported on stone brackets. Behind a balcony balustrade in the attic storey sits a large canted south-east dormer with a moulded and elaborately ornamented keystoned window of two lights, flanked by Baroque strapwork panels beneath a moulded and decorated cornice. The cornice supports a shaped and scrolled gable ornamented with egg-and-dart frieze and fruit swag, topped by a segmental shell pediment.

The six-bay east return onto the Land of Green Ginger features three ground-floor cross windows and a recessed entrance with mullioned over-light and leaded canopy to the north of the early 21st-century shopfront. The windows are separated by vermiculated rusticated pilaster strips topped by ashlar blocks decorated with ribbon swags. An elaborately ornamented and moulded entablature with moulded and dentillated cornice sits above, supported on four pairs of fluted brackets and a fluted and banded pilaster with Corinthian capital to the north. The first floor has six bays of cross windows with one-over-one sashes and a pseudo-balcony balustrade. Rusticated and banded pilasters separate each bay and support an entablature with elaborate stone appliques running between square stopped and sculpted pilaster capitals. The second floor contains six smaller two-light mullioned windows with moulded sills and decorated panels below, with a similarly ornate but bracketed entablature featuring bas-relief metopes and simple medallion square stops. The attic storey has a low panelled parapet decorated with simple medallions and bas reliefs, from which rise three dormers with decorative scrolled volute jambs, moulded window surrounds with two-over-two sashes, moulded cornices and swan-neck pediments.

The two-bay south return onto Whitefriargate follows a similar design, with a single-bay ground-floor early 21st-century shop window, two windows on each upper floor and a single dormer.

The ground floor interior was refitted in the late 20th century.