The Travellers Club

TQ 2980 SE CITY OF WESTMINSTER PALL MALL, SW1 82/61 (south side) 5.2.70 No. 106: The Travellers' Club G.V. I Gentlemen's Club. 1828-32 by Charles Barry. Stucco faced with rusticated stone quoins and eaves cornice, low pitch Roman tile roof. Epoch-making, astylar, Italian Renaissance palazzo design, the first of Barry's clubs. 2 tall storeys on podium-basement. 5 windows wide. Entrance in right hand bay, approached by flight of steps, tall architraved doorway with narrow panelled jambs and scrolled consoles carrying bold dentilled cornice. Recessed glazing bar sashes, those on ground floor in slightly eared architraves rising from pedestal course with apron panels flanked by consoles below and pulvinated friezes and moulded cornices above; those on 1st floor in fluted Corinthian pilastered and pedimented aedicules also rising from a pedestal-course with panelled pedestals flanking open balustrading in front of lower part of windows underlined by the guilloche-enriched ground floor cornice. Richly modelled Roman eaves cornice dentilled and modillioned and with lion-head stops to the cymatium. Stone balustrade to area raised on high double plinth, the dies surmounted by fluted iron lampstandards with "tazza" burners. Garden front, with smooth faced rustication to ground floor and mock-coursing to 1st floor, quoins etc., has 1:3:1 window grouping; vermiculated and rusticated surrounds to ground floor windows; 1st floor windows have shell ornamented tympana to their archivolt arched recesses flanked by Corinthian fluted pilasters and pierced mock Venetian balconettes. This front is finished off with a rich Vignolesque entablature and rising above this southern pitch of the roof is a former smoking-room belvedere added by Barry in 1842-43 with arcaded fenestration and flanking panels and niches; large chimney stacks composed of 5 shafts united by entablature. Fine interior organised about open Italianate cortile behind which is the staircase surmounted by small dome with Raphaelesque decorative painting by F. Sang; principal room is the tripartite library, behind 1st floor of garden front, with pairs of dividing columns and cast of Bassae frieze; ground floor coffee-room similarly tripartite with pillars, etc.; the interior decoration principally of 1843. Survey of London; Vol. XXIX.

Listing NGR: TQ2966880289