Minerva House, North Crescent

Minerva House, located on North Crescent, is a former car showroom and repair workshop with offices above, built between 1912 and 1913 by George Vernon for the Minerva Motor Company. The building is constructed of Portland stone ashlar and features a symmetrical design across four storeys and five bays, with a concave front that aligns with the crescent shape of the street.

The ground floor has openings with rounded corners, adorned with billet moulding and separated by thin V-profile fillets. The entrances in the outer bays are segmental-arched with Mannerist detailing, featuring part-glazed panelled double doors inscribed with "Minerva House" above, along with overlights. The window openings, which previously had sliding shutters and mahogany folding doors, are articulated in a way that mirrors the ground floor on the upper three storeys. Narrower flanking bays sit above the doors, and slender engaged columns rise to the full height of the building, culminating in stylised Doric entablatures embellished with wreaths and drops at each bay.

The central bays feature bowed stone transom and mullion windows, with four lights in the middle and three lights in the outer bays, all with small panes and Ionic half-column jambs. Panelled spandrel panels are present between the first and second floors. The central bay on the third floor supports a swag-enriched base for a triumphal arch feature that contains a carved statue of Minerva in front of a window. The flanking bays are topped with enriched broken pediments that include cartouches, while the outer bays repeat the arch motif on a smaller scale for the windows, which have swagged aprons. Cast-iron railings are present at bays two and four. The interior has not been inspected.