Museum Tavern

The Museum Tavern is a public house located on Great Russell Street in Camden, built between 1855 and 1864 by architects William Finch Hill and E.L. Paraire. The building is designed in a modified French Renaissance style and is constructed of stucco with a wooden ground floor.

It stands four storeys tall and features a single window with a splayed corner and a symmetrical five-window return to Museum Street. The public house front is adorned with Corinthian pilasters and colonnettes that support an entablature with a dentil cornice. The round-arched, recessed openings have panelled dados, and the entrance on the splayed corner includes a fanlight and double part-glazed doors. The main entrance on Museum Street is highlighted by a pediment, a rectangular fanlight, and double part-glazed doors.

The first to third floors showcase rusticated corners and pilaster strips at the angles, capped by small segmental pediments. The windows are predominantly two-pane sash windows, with the first floor featuring round-arched, architraved, recessed sashes. Above these are architraved oculi decorated with grills and swags. The second floor has segmental-arched architraved sashes, and there is a console bracketed cornice beneath the recessed sashes of the third floor. The building is finished with a coved cornice and a blocking course.

Inside, the Museum Tavern retains some original features, including a Classically styled wooden back fitting to the bar, although the glass is a later addition.