Kodak House

Kodak House is an office block located on Kingsway in Camden, built around 1911 by Sir John Burnet and Partners, with Thomas Tait as the job architect for Kodak. The building features a steel frame with a Portland stone façade and bronze spandrel panels that highlight its structural design. It also has a bronze roof canopy adorned with antefixae masks.

The exterior consists of six storeys, a basement, and a 20th-century attic storey. The main frontage has five window bays, with a splayed one-window corner treatment and seven window bays on the return. The windows have post-1973 glazing and were originally six-light casements with leaded panes. The ground floor has a plate glass frontage, and the central doorway is framed by a bolection moulded surround, flanked by bronze torches. There is a plain stone continuous sill at the first floor level, with square-headed recessed windows. Stone pilasters, which rise from the second floor level and have bases but no capitals, separate the bays and lead into the top frieze. The building is topped with a coved stone cornice featuring a band of Greek fret ornament.

Inside, Kodak House retains good original staircases, with the principal staircase leading to the first floor made of marble and featuring a bronze handrail. Other original features may still exist behind partitioning.

Historically, Kodak House is noted as an early example of a straightforward office block in London. While it represents a pioneering work of modern design, it is influenced by Edwardian Neo-Classical design, stripped of most ornamentation and following a Beaux Arts axial plan. Burnet conducted a study tour of America to prepare for this project, and although he had reservations about the simplicity of the design, the client appreciated it.