Regent Palace Hotel (Main Building And Bridge)

Hotel, designed 1911, built 1912-1915

This hotel was designed by W. J. Ancell working with Henry Tanner Junior and built between 1912 and 1915. Following Ancell's death, his assistant F. J. Wills completed the project. The building was raised and extended in 1934-1936, also by F. J. Wills. During this later phase, the basement bars and restaurants, along with the ground-floor coffee room (now the Titanic Room), were remodelled by Oliver Bernard. The basement areas were restored in 1994 as the Atlantic Bar by David Connor.

Construction and Materials

The hotel has a steel frame clad in white glazed 'Burmantofts Marmo' faience with a roof of green Westmorland slate. It occupies an irregular trapezoidal or lozenge-shaped site.

Plan and Layout

The hotel has two main floors of public rooms at ground floor and basement levels, with bedrooms above that are not of special interest. The plan is axial, with the principal dining room (now the Titanic Room) set in the widest part of the building, with a separate exit to Brewer Street. Below this is the grill room, now a bar, with a winter garden and lower foyers in corresponding locations on different floors. In the basement there is a private dining room (the 'Chez Cup Bar') beneath the entrance and Dick's Bar to the side.

Exterior

The main entrance is positioned on the apex corner nearest to Piccadilly Circus. This is emphasised by being treated as a drum with a projecting canopy on the ground floor and an elaborate ironwork balcony above. On the long elevations to either side, the ground floor and mezzanine are treated as the base for an order of giant pilasters rising through four floors to a heavy projecting cornice. Above the cornice is a one- and two-storey attic with pavilions at regular intervals and a very tall slated mansard roof with two tiers of dormer windows.

All the windows originally had mullions. Small-paned glazing survives to the public rooms and sash windows to the bedrooms. The design is practical, ensuring that every bedroom enjoys natural light. The composition is best appreciated at close quarters, as the backstreet site prevents the building being seen as a whole.

The 1934-1936 alterations added raised rooftop rooms over the entrance to create two more storeys of bedrooms, along with a new lift tower.

Original 1915 Interiors

Decoration from 1915 survives visibly only in the basement grill room (now bar and restaurant) and the adjoining service corridor, which has lincrusta walls and a plaster filigree ceiling. The walls of the bar/restaurant are panelled in mahogany with pilasters, inset pier glasses and, above, friezes of sphinxes. The trabeated ceiling has moulded cornices now inset with 1930s lights in glazed strips. There are marble-clad square columns with brackets forming capitals. The windows, which give onto a false area and are backlit, have small panes of coloured glass in lead cames set in mullions—as originally existed on the upper floors also.

Oliver Bernard's Interiors (1934-1936)

The building is today best regarded for its interiors by Oliver Bernard from the 1934-1936 remodelling.

Chez Cup Bar (Former Billiard Room)

In 1934 the basement billiard room was transformed into a cocktail bar called the 'Chez Cup Bar', now used for private functions. This retains its floor of small wood blocks laid in a radial pattern.

Basement Foyer

The basement foyer is reached via a separate entrance from Glasshouse Street, through former dining room doors now serving as external doors. The foyer has travertine marble panels, polished limestone lintels, and the box lighting that is such a feature of Bernard's work. The open trellis balustrading to the staircase, with its volute moulding, is distinctly Bernard's work, and there is a very grand chandelier. The reception desks are bounded by the same polished limestone that forms a skirting all around the space and are therefore presumed to be substantially original.

Dick's Bar (Former Smoke Room)

Dick's Bar, the former smoke room, is the finest single space. It has thick columns topped with capitals formed of three layers of ribbed sheet glass. The deeply coved central ceiling area has ribbed glass inset continuous light fitting and prominent ventilation extracts treated as part of the architecture over the columns and within the cornice. Similarly, radiators with moulded grilles are incorporated into the wall panelling.

Above a narrow skirting of Levanto marble, the walls are panelled in banded birch decoration inset with steel strips that continue, with curved moulding, as horizontal glazing bars across the false windows on one side. The lower snug at the rear of the bar has square pillars with birch panelling and steel banding, and birch panelling to the walls.

Titanic Bar (Former Coffee and Dining Room, First Floor)

On the first floor, the coffee and dining room was remodelled in 1935 by Bernard and was most recently known as the Titanic Bar. This is a tripartite space with square columns, panelled with inset coves to the main flanks, and glass capitals forming uplighters to a shallow coved frieze incorporating ventilation ducts. Around the walls, panelling survives above dado level (below dado level is obscured by later seating) with volute mouldings that are repeated in the mirror and door surrounds. Inset coves to the ceilings incorporate lighting concealed in glass petals inset in brass—rather rococo fixtures. The ensemble is lighter and more frivolous, but with greater classical references, than the work to the basement below, rather anticipating the historicism of Copenhagen's Tivoli or the Festival of Britain's pleasure gardens at Battersea Park.

Upper Floors and Ancillary Buildings

The bedrooms on the upper floors were always modest and have been extensively modified; they are not of special interest. The annex building fronting Brewer Street is not of special interest, but the bridge over Sherwood Street is a stirring composition of terracotta and green Roman tile roof that closes the vista, with ornamental grilles and mouldings.

Historical Context

Oliver Bernard (1881-1939) was one of the leading interior designers in the Art Deco style. He had no formal architectural training but began his career as a theatre designer in London, Manchester, New York, and Boston. He first worked for J. Lyons designing ceramics for the British Empire Exhibition, where he also produced a series of murals that were widely admired. These led to him becoming technical director of the British Pavilion at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, from which Art Deco takes its name. Bernard was thus directly involved with the movement at its zenith.

He went on to work as an interior designer, first for Lyons Corner Houses and then for the company's hotels. Bernard worked for a marginally different clientele in his big hotels—slightly better off and more sophisticated without being in the least open to the charge of being fast. He aimed to design interiors which communicated a sense of fun, a feeling that you were very definitely not at home but need not be nervous all the same.

His cocktail bars at the Regent Palace are described in Building (May 1935) as 'just a trifle dissipated and naughty, but not sufficiently so to be vulgar', and the Chez-Cup Bar is hailed as 'slick and smart and quite the last thing in interior decoration.' David Dean considered that 'Time's accretions have established [Bernard's designs] as evoking their period so powerfully that a merit has been bestowed on them which was not evident when they were first designed.'

Significance

The steel frame was quite complicated and elaborate because of the irregular shape of the site, which prompted a special article in The Builder. The exterior is of some interest for its extensive and elaborate faience decoration, intended to be enjoyed in detail rather than as an overall composition. However, the Regent Palace Hotel is listed primarily for the importance of its surviving principal public interiors by Ancell and Bernard. The ancillary building by F. J. Wills from 1934-1936 is not included in the listing.