Credit Lyonnais

Credit Lyonnais is an 1868 building designed by Francis, located on Lombard Street in London. It features an opulent Italianate style with nine bays facing Lombard Street, a splayed corner, and six bays on Gracechurch Street. The building has four main storeys, each marked by pilasters or columns and an entablature.

The basement windows have segmental heads and are protected by iron railings, with a surbase that includes projecting panelled pedestals. The ground floor features blocked pilasters with carved caps and ornamental keystones above round-headed windows that penetrate the architrave and frieze of the entablature. On the first floor, there is a pedestalled Corinthian order of pilasters with attached unfluted columns, coupled at either end and over the entrance. Balustrades between the pedestals protect the windows, which have pediment hoods on console brackets. The entablature has a pulvinated frieze and a dentilled cornice that breaks forward over each column, supporting carved consoles that buttress panelled pilasters at the second floor level.

The second floor windows are segment-headed with moulded architraves and lion mask keystones. Above this, the third floor features panelled pilasters with carved caps, and the windows are round-headed, with a pair in each bay. These windows have carved keystones that penetrate the architrave of the crowning entablature, which breaks forward over each bay division and is decorated with brackets and roundels in the frieze, topped by a balustrade.

The main entrance is arched and features a mask keystone, located in the wider fifth bay on the Lombard Street front. This bay is highlighted by a more elaborate design, including tripartite window compositions on the upper floors and a reclining female figure sculpture over the segmental pediment of the first floor windows in this bay, with a similar treatment applied to the narrower splayed corner bay.