7 And 9, Gracechurch Street

This is a former bank and office block, constructed between 1919 and 1923 by W. Campbell-Jones for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, with construction by Trollope & Colls. The building is of steel frame construction, faced with Portland stone, channelled and rusticated in alternating bands at ground floor level. It occupies an awkward rhomboid-shaped site, cleverly disguised to appear rectangular. The building rises four storeys, with an attic and basement, and has seven bays in total.

The symmetrical façade is in a French Baroque/Beaux Arts style. The tall ground floor features a central round-arched entrance, flanked by architraved, square-headed windows, and further round arches to the end bays, one providing access to Bell Yard. These arches are accentuated by exaggerated keystones featuring large, foliated consoles, with a central cartouche. A plain band separates the ground floor from the first floor, above which ionic pilasters rise, paired at the penultimate bays, supporting an entablature with simple architrave sections over the pilasters and a projecting, bracketed cornice. The attic is set back and features large consoles on the line of each pilaster, separating the bays. Fine, metal-framed Crittall windows are present, with complex margin glazing to both the ground floor and upper floors, incorporating thin transoms, mullions, and patterned small panes. The second floor’s spandrel panels feature cartouches (originally bearing the names of five principal Chinese towns in Chinese characters), enclosed within square heads, flanked by floral drops. Bay leaf bands decorate the third floor spandrel panels. Metal basement grilles and wreathed grilles are present within the entrance arches, designed by The Bromsgrove Guild.

The interior's most notable feature is the sumptuous banking hall, occupying the entire ground floor. This space is finished with marble, tile, and mosaic work by Art Pavements & Decorations Ltd. Walls are lined with American cipollino, with a dado of green Swedish marble and buff marble rail. Structural stanchions are designed as Doric columns encased in blue Ardennes marble, supporting a richly decorated, low relief plasterwork, panelled ceiling with shallow domes featuring patterned glazing to provide top lighting. At the far end of the hall is a screen of marble ionic columns at ground-floor level, supporting a white Pentelic marble openwork balustrade, with a sculptured group of three Chinese boys positioned centrally.

Many main rooms retain polished hardwood doors and panelling combining Australian silkwood and Italian walnut timbers; one room is believed to retain an Adam fireplace. The original banking hall floor was mosaic and is thought to survive beneath a more recent false floor. Later 20th-century partitioning and a mezzanine floor have been inserted. The building's design reflected the bank’s importance, but it was also intended that the corporation would only occupy the lower floors, letting the offices above to recoup construction costs. The building was completed relatively quickly, taking just over one year to construct.