Great Western Hotel

The Great Western Hotel is a hotel built between 1851 and 1853, which opened in 1854 and underwent alterations from 1933 to 1936. It was designed by P C Hardwick for the Great Western Railway. The building is primarily brick and stuccoed, except for the ground floor and first floor of the central bays, which are faced in stone. It features a Welsh slate roof and is designed in the French Second Empire style.

The hotel stands four storeys tall with an attic and has a seven-bay central section that breaks forward, along with a further break forward of five bays under a pediment. There are seven-bay ranges on either side, each with projecting two-bay square angle towers that rise to six storeys. The building has channelled angle pilasters, and the ground and first floors of the central section have been refenestrated, while the remaining windows are sashes set in eared architraves. The first-floor windows are adorned with pulvinated friezes and pediments, and there is a sill band at the third floor. A modillion cornice with drops decorates the central range, and the pediment features sculpted figures representing Peace, Plenty, Science, and Industry by John Thomas.

The hotel has a steep pavilion roof with pedimented dormers above the attic, while the other dormers are of 20th-century design. The towers have ogee roofs with pierced parapets. The Great Western Hotel is notable as the first of the large purpose-built hotels in London.