St John's Wharves Warehouses North Block (Oddbin's Limited)

Dated 1873 (as indicated by a date stone laid by John Rober Hall, with Charles Duncan possibly being the architect), this is a large warehouse block situated on a corner site with Dundee Street. It is constructed of red brick with white Suffolk brick segmental window arches and decorative brick banding at the first and third floor levels. The corner of the building is rounded. The Dundee Street elevation, which follows the road's line, retains a significant length of original deeply moulded brick cornice, cut back towards the corner and facing High Street, topped with a stone coping. It has eight bays facing High Street and nine bays facing Dundee Street. The windows are segmentally arched, with small panes of iron-framed glazing and stone sills. A pair of full-height ranked windows are visible on the High Street elevation, and two pairs are on the Dundee Street elevation, featuring white brick bull-nosed reveals and small-paned glazing to tongue and groove hatch doors. Cast iron panelled lintels serve as sole plates to the hatch ranks and above the ground floor windows. Office doors are present on both elevations, with rusticated, vermiculated surrounds, voussoirs and a keystone to the Dundee Street doorway. Lattice plate bridges connect the building at the second and fifth floor levels to the “A” and “E” warehouses of St John's Wharves. The interior features cast iron columns with flagged caps on the ground floor, a timber first floor, and concrete beams on the upper floors. The warehouse is linked to the “A” and “E” warehouses of St John’s Wharves on Wapping High Street, which are also listed. It possesses architectural interest due to its rounded corner, arched windows, and white brick bands and is considered a particularly good warehouse example of its period, potentially exhibiting extremely early use of concrete beams.