Queens Building

The Queens Building, now Nos 37-43 Rutland Street, is a former boot warehouse built in 1897. It was designed by Harding and Topott of Leicester for Alfred Tyler and Sons, a boot manufacturers. The building is constructed of red brick with stone dressings and slate roofs, featuring a rear corner stack. It is an example of Edwardian Baroque style situated on a corner plot, curving onto Queen Street.

The building is four storeys high with an attic, and originally had a sixteen-window range to the first floor. The ground floor, initially containing entrances and shop premises, displays a stone-banded and decorated arcade, now mainly painted. Tall brick pilasters, banded with stone and topped with composite capitals, extend upwards, linking the first and second floors and supporting an entablature with a bracketed cornice. Windows on the first floor have shouldered architraves and swagged keystones. Above, Ionic columns flank windows with central blocks, a lintel band curving inwards over each window, with a bracket to support it. A balustrade, incorporating circular and square moulded balusters, sits above the entablature, followed by a series of Diocletian windows that mirror the ground floor arcade. Further above are gabled sections with oeil-de-boeuf windows.

The main entrance bay on Rutland Street features a canted bay on the first floor and an octagonal lantern at the gable level, topped with a tiled pyramidal roof. The gable ends are blank, and the rear walls facing the internal angle have simpler windows.

Internally, the building has been altered, but the entrance lobby on Rutland Street retains sections of an ornamental frieze, and the lower part of the staircase retains its original iron balustrade.

The Queens Building contributes significantly to the historic character of the area, forming a prominent part of a group of buildings which includes the adjacent church and the former Odeon Cinema.