19 Mercer Street and 21 Shelton Street

A block of 7 flats arranged over six storeys and basement, built between 1985 and 1987 by the Terry Farrell Partnership as part of the regeneration of Comyn Ching Triangle.

The building is clad in a mix of yellow London stock brick, with deep bands of darker buff and grey brick between the storeys and on the corner bays, and glazed blue brick banding and ornament. The ground floor features rusticated masonry, including the entrances, painted dark plum colour. Timber windows on the street elevations are painted white between blue panels; on the rear elevation they are painted green and blue. Doors, steel canopies and balconies are dark red in colour. Balustrades are now painted grey and black. The scale, forms and palette of materials and colours complement and provide both a unifying identity and new vitality to the scheme.

The plan forms an angular, near-symmetrical corner block with modelled entrances on each elevation, square on plan with six storeys and basement.

The side elevations, in three bays, converge on an expressive corner bay set back deeply behind a prominent drum at ground floor level. The corner is marked by a set back angle rising through the upper floors and deep oversailing canopies above the attic storey. The drum pier has an incised basal band and flared capital painted grey. Behind it, enclosed by a steel balustrade bearing the Comyn Ching 'CC' logo, is a light well with full-height tripartite windows of small paned units and single panes with small paned upper lights, flanked by vertical panels painted blue, rising through the basement and ground floor. At basement level, part-glazed doors with integral small-paned overlights open onto a small enclosed yard. Upper floors have similar tripartite windows with segmental steel balconies. On the fourth and fifth floors, canted corner windows with timber brackets rise through two storeys, with blue glazed brick decoration to the flanking brickwork. A deep oversailing canopy, broken at the angle, projects over the ensemble.

The principal Mercer Street entrance appears cut into the ground floor rustication, which is angled, and is recessed between a pair of simplified columns on short rusticated bases. Set back to the left is a small timber corner window of a single pane beneath four upper lights with a deep cill. The door, in a reeded architrave, is painted dark red, has vertical panels below four widely spaced square glazed upper lights arranged in a pattern used throughout Comyn Ching. Within the recess, the underside of the internal stairs rises from the right. To the left a quadrant is modelled in the rusticated band.

The Shelton Street entrance is similar but symmetrical, flanked by a single window on each side and columns on tall bases; the door has a plain integral fanlight. Below to each side is a semicircular window with a simple keystone.

Flanking bays have paired casements with four-pane upper lights and on the first floor have steel window guards. The attic storey is set back with pilasters between the bays and has a moulded cornice.

At the rear, the inner corner is cut back beneath projecting semi-circular masonry balconies in expressed concrete, which act as canopies to the floor below. At upper level the window rises through two storeys. The ground floor and basement levels also have a double-height window in a diagonally set rectangular concrete well behind a modelled parapet wall. Each floor has a facetted small-paned window unit, painted green and blue, which alternately project outwards or inwards. At the apex is a small lantern on a moulded base.

In the entrance hall at the principal Mercer Street entrance, the space has a moulded rusticated dado and masonry stairs with a slender steel balustrade, the geometric form echoing the idiom used throughout the development.