Institute Of Directors

The Institute of Directors is a former gentlemen's club, built between 1826 and 1828 by John Nash, with significant remodelling by Burton between 1858 and 1859, and an extension to the east by Thompson and Walford between 1912 and 1913. The building is constructed of stucco with a rusticated ground floor, set beneath a slate roof. It is of Graeco-Roman design, demonstrating Nash’s preference for an Augustan style distinct from Burton’s more classical Athenaeum. The building forms part of the southern end of Nash’s designed route, “Via Triumphalis,” following the demolition of Carlton House.

The building is thirteen windows wide facing Pall Mall, with a central seven-window façade featuring a two-storey portico. The portico’s lower level has paired, fluted Roman Doric columns, while the upper level has Corinthian columns (originally unfluted) topped by a pediment containing sculpture added by Burton. The ground floor windows have plate glass sashes within eared architraves, each adorned with a Piron head mask centred above, within segmental arched recesses with scrolled keystones. The first-floor windows have architraves bordered by panelled strips and consoles supporting pediments, rising from a pedestal course of Nash's original ground-floor entablature, which includes blind balustrades below the window sills. A frieze, located below the main cornice and crowning balustraded parapet, is enriched with Italianate scrolls and cartouches added by Burton. The Waterloo Place front is similar, but Nash's portico was removed by Burton, who retained the Roman Doric portico on the Carlton House Terrace façade. Burton also added a stone area balustrade with a cast iron cornice, topped by cast iron Grecian gas lamp standards featuring "tazza" burners.

The interior features a grand stone staircase rising in a single flight, returning in two to the first-floor gallery-landing, which has a coved ceiling and a side-light lantern (rebuilt after war damage). Behind the garden front are two spacious tripartite apartments: one a smoking room on the ground floor, and the other a library on the first floor, separated by scagliola columns.