The Travellers Club

The Travellers' Club is a gentlemen's club dating from 1828-32, designed by Charles Barry. It is an epoch-making example of Italian Renaissance palazzo design, and was Barry's first club commission. The building is constructed with stucco faced with rusticated stone quoins and has a low-pitched Roman tile roof. It is two storeys high, built on a podium-basement, and five windows wide.

The main facade features a tall architraved entrance in the right-hand bay, approached by a flight of steps. The windows are recessed glazing bar sashes. Ground floor windows are within slightly eared architraves rising from a pedestal course, with apron panels, consoles, pulvinated friezes, and moulded cornices. First-floor windows are framed by fluted Corinthian pilastered and pedimented aedicules, also rising from a pedestal course, with panelled pedestals and open balustrading. A richly modelled Roman eaves cornice is dentilled, modillioned, and features lion-head stops to the cymatium. A stone balustrade to the area is raised on a high double plinth, with fluted iron lamp standards and “tazza” burners.

The garden front has smooth faced rustication to the ground floor and mock-coursing to the first floor, displaying a 1:3:1 window grouping. Ground floor windows have vermiculated and rusticated surrounds, while first-floor windows feature shell-ornamented tympana within archivolt arched recesses, flanked by Corinthian fluted pilasters and pierced mock Venetian balconettes. A rich Vignolesque entablature tops this facade. A former smoking-room belvedere, also by Barry and added in 1842-43, rises above the southern pitch of the roof, incorporating arcaded fenestration and flanking panels and niches. The building is characterised by large chimney stacks composed of five shafts united by an entablature.

The interior is arranged around an open Italianate courtyard. A staircase is surmounted by a small dome decorated with Raphaelesque painting by F. Sang. The principal room is a tripartite library on the first floor, featuring pairs of dividing columns and a cast of the Bassae frieze. The ground floor coffee-room is also tripartite, with pillars. Interior decoration principally dates to 1843.