Victoria House and Attached Railings

Victoria House is a commercial building with ground floor shops, constructed between 1926 and 1932. It was designed by Charles William Long as headquarters for the Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company, and features sculpture by Herbert William Palliser and ornamental brasswork by the Bromsgrove Guild. The building’s structure is a steel frame clad in Portland stone, with bronze infill panels and copperlite glazing surrounds, topped with a green slate mansard roof with dormers.

The building occupies a rectangular island site and has facades facing Bloomsbury Square, Bloomsbury Place, Vernon Place, and Southampton Row. The long sides have 15 window bays each, while the returns have five. The west facade, facing Bloomsbury Square, has a tall, channelled ground floor and a central distyle-in-antis Ionic portico extending from the first to the fourth floors (attic), with attached columns and paired pilasters. The ground floor to third floor windows are tripartite with small panes, and the second floor includes relief pediments. The attic windows, also with small panes, are grouped in threes within plain rectangular recesses. A tympanum features a central robed figure with outstretched arms, flanked by figures representing the bounty of nature. The cornice above is surmounted by a parapet with panels of open ornamental brasswork behind a further attic storey with slightly offset windows. Mansard dormers are similarly offset, echoing the shape of the triangular pediment. A two-storey feature rises centrally above the mansard. The east facade is similar, but with ground floor shops (originally recessed, now with 20th-century projecting shopfronts) and a tympanum sculpture depicting navigation and new forms of industry. The returns are also in a similar style, with distyle-in-antis centres and paired pilasters, but without tympana. Entrance doors on all sides are of panelled bronze.

The interiors remain virtually unaltered. Entrance lobbies are faced with Subiaco marble, featuring Greek-style decoration and decorative brasswork. A central ground floor public area is open through three floors to an elaborate, coffered suspended ceiling. The basement contains a meeting/dance hall with coloured glass light fittings, polished steel door furniture and surrounds, and radiator grilles embossed with a ‘VH’ monogram. Extensive mahogany panelling decorates the third-floor offices. Some rooms retain 18th-century fireplaces from houses previously on the site.