St Olaf House

St Olaf House is a head office building constructed in 1931 as part of Hay’s Wharf, designed by HS Goodhart-Rendel. It is a steel-frame building faced with Portland stone and featuring a dark, polished granite plinth, with the roof concealed behind a parapet. The style is Continental Modern. The building follows a T-plan, with a long frontage to the river. The ground floor is largely open, supported by exposed steel stanchions, except for a central entrance hall block where the “T” intersects, and two smaller blocks flanking the Tooley Street entrance.

The Tooley Street facade is six storeys high, with a wide central bay and narrower bays on either side. A wide entrance way to the ground floor has rounded returns, each bearing a large, glazed, bronze light fitting. Above the entrance, tall, gilt lettering displays the name “ST OLAF HOUSE.” The angles of the outer bays are rounded on all floors except the ground floor, where they are square, the square angle gradually transitioning to round at the midpoint of the first floor. A black and gold mosaic outline figure of St Olaf, with the inscription “ST OLAF, KING OF NORWAY,” is located above the change in angle on the left bay. The right bay features a square doorway with a deep reveal and polished granite architrave, also inscribed “ST OLAF HOUSE,” with later bronze double doors. Continuous glazing is used across the central bay on the first four floors, each glazed row projecting as a shallow oriel. The fifth floor has five square windows within moulded architraves, and a lozenge-shaped window, similarly framed, on either side of the central window. The left bay has three narrow lights on the first four floors, with the fifth floor blank. The right bay has similar narrow windows on the first four floors, stepped upwards to indicate a staircase within. The fifth floor here too is blank. All windows feature gilt steel glazing bars. The river frontage has seven bays of faceted windows with metal glazing bars. A large relief panel by Frank Dobson, made of gilded metal and terracotta with a black granite incised edge, is set into the river elevation, decorated with taller windows and balconies with gilded metal railings.

The interior retains original features, including a terrazzo floor with alternating light and dark horizontal banding in the entrance hall, a distinctive metal balustrade to the staircase, original lifts, landings and light fittings. The two main directors’ rooms, board room, and adjoining common room, which occupy three floors of the river frontage, remain well-preserved. The offices have been refurbished, and additional floors have been added to the roof. The building was constructed on the site of Flitcroft’s St Olaf's Church and demonstrates influences from Swedish architecture, marking an important introduction of the Continental Modern style into England in the 1930s.