7 And 8, Balfour Place W1

This is a pair of large townhouses with a connecting block, built between 1892 and 1894 by Balfour and Turner. The buildings are part of a larger development that included Rex Place, Mount Street, and Aldford Street, undertaken as part of improvements to the Grosvenor Estate. They are constructed of red brick with Portland stone dressings and have slate roofs. The architectural style is Free Style, incorporating details reminiscent of Flemish and early Renaissance designs.

Each front is six windows wide, arranged in pairs, and extends over four storeys with basements and gabled attics. The frontages are articulated with central, two-storey stone loggia porches. These porches feature columns with Byzantine Ionic capitals, coupled centrally on both floors, and are topped with balustraded parapets. The windows are recessed glazing bar sashes set under flat arches with shallow stone architraves to the second floor; the third floor has plain architraves with gauged arches, and the attics have shaped gables. Stone string cornices and an enriched cornice are present above the second floor.

The connecting block has a glazed-in, columned loggia on the first floor, echoing the design of the entrance porches. The returns to Aldford Street and Mount Street are Flemish-gabled, with stone arcades on the ground floor, supported by enriched console brackets. Above these arcades are two-storey rectangular stone bays with pilastered triplets of windows to each floor. A blind, canted stone bay, similarly detailed, crowns the third floor and is finished with a leaded tent roof and applied finial. Wrought iron area railings are present.