152-160, WARDOUR STREET W1

Commercial premises built by F L Pearson for Novello's music publishers. The main frontage on Wardour Street dates from 1906, while the rear portion was built in 1898 as printing and binding departments.

The 1906 building is constructed of red brick with lavish Portland ashlar stone dressings and a slate roof. It rises to three storeys with a deep dormered mansard. The architectural style is Free Style informed by careful reference to Nordic late Renaissance, particularly the Hanseatic Town Hall as noted by Pevsner, with comparison to the Bremen Rathaus.

The ground floor features a stone columned arcaded design in a free Ionic order with depressed arches. The arcade projects to support the upper storeys, which are five windows wide. The upper floors contain large transomed three-light windows surmounted by alternating segmental and triangular pediments. The left recessed bay contains the former main entrance, which is marked by an elaborate oriel window above. Side entrances are located elsewhere. An entablature sits over the ground floor, followed by a large bracketed stone cornice and parapet with coping. The Sheraton Street return is plainer and six windows wide.

The interior continues the classical theme in late seventeenth-century English style. The main entrance opens into a hall panelled in plaster imitating wood, with a fireplace featuring an eared and scrolled surround. A rectangular opening set with cartouche and swags beneath a heavy egg and dart cornice leads to an open stairwell closely modelled on Ashburnham House at Westminster School. The stair is cantilevered with bulbous balusters and rail. A giant Ionic order rises above an egg and dart dado, its base set in a band of fruit and swags with panels featuring musical instruments. The heavily banded flat ceiling is broken by a central cupola with paired Corinthian columns.

A double screen of Ionic columns leads to an anteroom with heavy cornice and bolection-moulded fireplace beneath a massive cartouche of fruit and flowers. Beyond a double door with openwork swags lies the Great Hall, a recital room of five bays by three with double height. The walls are lined with bolection-moulded wooden panelling beneath a giant fluted Corinthian order. A musicians' gallery with curly balusters is reached by a dog-leg stair. The trabeated ceiling features a modillion cornice. The matching three-bay ends contain central double doors under broken segmental pediments with Corinthian columns and busts, flanked by glazed bookcases. Windows are fitted with shutters and scroll pediments. Two chandeliers light the space.

The rear premises from 1898 form a simplified version with three storeys, arcaded ground floor, two main upper floors with cross-mullioned windows, and an attic above the cornice.