Russell Hotel And Attached Railings With Piers And Lamps

Russell Hotel and Attached Railings with Piers and Lamps

Hotel built 1892–98, designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll, surveyor of the Bedford Estate. The building is constructed in red brick with terracotta dressings, featuring roofs and turrets with green fishscale tiles. Tall slab chimney-stacks are banded horizontally with brick and terracotta. Originally topped with a central copper dome and lantern, this has since been replaced with a tile mansard roof.

The hotel exemplifies a flamboyant French Renaissance style derived from engravings of the Château de Madrid, with elaborate decorative schemes throughout.

The exterior comprises eight storeys with attics and basements. The principal façade is symmetrical, displaying seven gabled bays with octagonal corner turrets. The return to Bernard Street has twelve windows; the return to Guilford Street has eight windows and an attached rectangular tower at the right-hand angle. The façade is articulated vertically by octagonal turrets with ogee roofs positioned at angles. The penultimate gabled bays contain canted bay windows rising from ground to sixth-floor level, terminating in half-ogee roofs with two-light windows. A three-bay central projecting porch features a round-arched entrance flanked by single window bays rising to fourth-floor level with recessed bay windows forming the central bay above the entrance. A projecting modillion cornice at fifth-floor level marks the transition above, where flanking bays become three-storey semicircular turrets surmounted by conical tile roofs with gablets. These turrets are linked across the now flat, recessed central bay by a wide arch surmounted by a scrolled pediment containing two round-arched paired windows, an entablature inscribed with the date 1894, above which sits a rectangular gabled dormer. All elements feature elaborate terracotta decoration.

Round-arched ground-floor windows sit within shallow arcading with attached Ionic columns. Other windows are square-headed, predominantly mullion and transom casements. The first floor displays continuous projecting arcaded terracotta balconies with round-arched balustrades and coats of arms in the spandrels. Flanking the balcony over the entrance at first-floor level are figures in historical costume positioned in corbelled niches. The second floor has continuous balconies with terracotta round-arched balustrades. The third and fourth floors feature windows with cast-iron continuous balconies. A projecting modillion cornice at fifth-floor level sits above an enriched frieze following the contours of the bays. Shaped gables are decorated with horizontal brick and terracotta bands and small windows. The returns are designed in similar style.

The entrance hall is lined in pink and red marble, divided into three bays by grey marble round-arched arcades supported on grey marble columns with gilding. The frieze and spandrels contain sumptuous plaster-moulded female figures of proto-art-nouveau character. A marble staircase rises to the right, beneath a Jacobean-style ceiling with chandeliers and some stained glass. Beyond the entrance hall, the Woburn Suite is accessed through a large hall now with low partitions, featuring black and white marbled pilasters, a heavy modillion cornice, and a coved ceiling with lavish swags beneath a false ceiling. The Victorian Carvery is lined with grey marble panelling to frieze height and features grey marble-clad hexagonal columns that culminate in alternating small Ionic columns and sculpted figures. Similar columns appear in the frieze around the walls, with a projecting fireplace in matching marble and chandeliers. The King's Bar is panelled to frieze height with organic capitals to some pilasters. Doorcases (one now a bookcase) feature giant Jacobean keystones beneath plaster friezes of chubby putti. A marble fireplace and trabeated ceiling with varied mouldings complete this space. The Virginia Woolf Room displays art-nouveau plaster spandrels and plaster ceiling cornices. The Bedford Suite features pilasters and plaster ceilings.

Attached wrought-iron railings with terracotta piers and cast-iron lampstandards with figures at their bases stand on the piers.

Doll's flamboyant use of terracotta is a distinctive feature of his work on the Bedford Estate. This hotel represents his finest surviving building and was one of two extravagant 1890s hotels that imposed a fin-de-siècle character on Russell Square.