Former Dillon'S Bookshop And Attached Railings And Gates

This is a terrace of shops with flats above, now a single shop and offices, built between 1907 and 1908 by Charles Fitzroy Doll, the surveyor for the Bedford Estate. It is located on the south side of Torrington Place, with returns to Gower Street and Malet Street. The building is constructed of red brick with terracotta and stone dressings, and has steeply pitched tiled roofs with gables over each bay and tall chimney stacks. The architectural style is elaborate Franco-Flemish Gothic.

The exterior is three storeys high, with attics and basements. There are eight bays facing Torrington Place, plus three-bay returns to Gower Street and Malet Street. The ground floor was damaged during the Second World War and subsequently repaired with a simpler design of stone pilasters supporting an entablature at first-floor level, featuring plate glass windows. Above the ground floor, the facade is detailed with vertical attached colonnettes, recessed rainwater pipes dated 1908 with lion mask spouts, and horizontal strings. Most bays have canted three-light bay windows spanning the first and second floors, flanked by single, two or three-light windows with round-arched, moulded surrounds. These bay windows include enriched transoms and tracery, with aprons depicting mythical beasts, coats of arms, foliage, and the word "SARA" on ribbons. The building is finished with enriched parapets sprouting gargoyles in the form of mythical beasts, an enriched and cusped cornice at third-floor level, and large gables with carved finials and seated figures in the tympanums, below three round-arched lights. Corner bays feature octagonal turrets with conical tiled roofs. The Gower Street return is similar in style, but without the bay windows. A three-light oriel window extends through two floors in the right-hand bay, topped by an octagonal feature with niches and gargoyles. At ground floor, there are two shop windows, alongside plain transom and mullion windows and a round-headed entrance with a keystone, fanlight, and partially glazed door. The Malet Street return is similar. Above the entrance, at first floor, is a carved balustrade of three panels in Art Nouveau style.

The interior has been altered.

Attached wrought and cast-iron railings and gates are present to the areas on Gower Street and include scrollwork panels and finials with elaborate floral designs.