Canada House (Including The Former Royal College Of Physicians)

TQ 2980 SE 82/39

CITY OF WESTMINSTER TRAFALGAR SQUARE, WC2 Canada House (including the former Royal College of Physicians)

5.2.70

GV II* Institutional building.1824-27 by Sir Robert Smirke as premises for the Royal College of Physicians and the Union Club, altered on conversion as Canada House by Septimus Warwick. Bath stone, slate and lead roofs. Unified composition occupying the west side of the square with porticoes to north (Pall Mall East) to the square and to the south (Cockspur Street), in dignified and scholarly Greek Revival characteristic of Smirke.

Two storeys, basement and wings and attic over centre as built with additional (and top heavy) attics provided over centre for Canada House. Fifteen windows wide to Trafalgar Square with former central entrance now window, in tetrastyle portico in antis composed of giant engaged Ionic columns contained by advanced giant pilastered bays. Recessed glazing bar sash windows. The wings either side of centre-piece articulated in shallow projection and recession, the advanced bays with same giant pilaster order as that flanking centrepiece and the central recessed portion of each wing with three close-set windows as tripartite group. Main entablature over first floor and attic storey with cornice and balustraded parapet. Heightened attics, over centre. The return to Pall Mall East retains original hexastyle Ionic portico (the entrance to the former Royal College of Physicians); to Cockspur Street a giant Ionic tetrastyle portico rebuilt by Septimus Warwick as entrance to Canada House.

The interior of the former Royal College of Physicians is least altered with fine entrance hall with Greek Doric column screen to staircase, of Club design (et Athenaeum), main reception room, library and lecture room, all with restrained Grecian decoration, etc. The interior of Canada House more altered, but retaining Smirke's design in the High Commissioner's Room and in modified form the principal staircase etc.

The siting of this institutional building on the west side of Trafalgar Square was programmed in Nash's Metropolitan Improvements of 1824-26.

Listing NGR: TQ2992880438