12, Clifford Street

This is a building originally constructed in 1883-85 as a technical college for The York Institute of Science, Art and Literature, designed by W.G. Penty. It is now a nightclub. The building is constructed of red brick in an English garden wall bond, with cream terracotta dressings, and has a slate roof.

The building has a basement and two main stories, with two street frontages, each seven bays wide, flanking a canted corner bay. The centre bay of the Clifford Street frontage rises to a gabled attic. The upper floors are articulated by pilasters rising from plain pedestals above a chamfered basement, and carrying an elaborate corbel cornice. An arcaded parapet incorporates sunk panel piers topped with miniature kiosk finials, repeated on squat pilasters flanking a coped gable. The parapet continues across the base of the gable, which has a pierced roundel and moulded spandrels.

The Clifford Street frontage has a blind basement with chamfered ashlar lintels to the bays flanking central steps. The central bay features panelled doors beneath a round arch of four orders with heavily moulded soffits and shafts, annulets, and foliate capitals. The arch head contains a fanlight with coloured glass, and the spandrels are moulded with civic emblems. The first floor has paired windows in round arches of two orders, heavily moulded like the doorcase. The ground and first floors of the flanking bays feature two-light cross windows with moulded timber mullions and transoms beneath shaped ashlar lintels. Ground floor windows have square heads and moulded sills while the second floor windows are round-headed on moulded turned shafts. A frieze runs beneath the first floor, featuring alternating panels of lively scrolls of leaves and roses, and decorated wording relating to the York Institute of Science, Art and Literature. A similarly moulded centre panel in the doorcase references the Institute’s founding in 1827. The Cumberland Street frontage is similar to the Clifford Street frontage, with inserted panelled double doors in the basement of the centre bay. A reset marble foundation stone recording its laying by the Prince of Wales on 18 July 1883, and the architect, is located to the right of the door; this has been replaced by a basement door in the corner bay, and a frieze panel displays the word "LITERATURE." Coloured glass remains in several window heads throughout the building. The interior was not inspected at the time of listing.