133-135, OXFORD STREET

Shop and offices designed by Simpson and Ayrton in 1911. Built originally as Pembroke House and now containing shops and a language school, the building occupies four earlier plots arranged in a T-shaped plan with frontages on Oxford Street, Wardour Street and Berwick Street.

The exterior of all three facades is clad in cast stone in an eclectic Edwardian Baroque style with northern European influences. The three-bay Oxford Street frontage is the most elaborate. It features a two-bay ground floor shop opening with a modern shop front to the right and a grand entrance bay with channelled rustication to the left, where the original coffered timber door with bronze lion handle survives. The first floor contains an arcade of semi-circular headed windows arranged in pairs, trios and pairs, with a balconette and cast iron railings above the doorway. The bays are divided by pilasters with alternating quoins and cartouches in place of capitals, breaking into a deep entablature. Behind this, recessed slightly, rise three storeys of offices with a central projecting shallow bow in bronze containing three five-light mullioned windows with timber sashes. The bronze bow is decorated with seventeenth-century-style patterns of panels, stars, cherub heads and shells. The two flanking bays have tripartite mullion windows with sashes. The sixth storey is recessed further with a row of sash windows rising behind iron railings in the central bay and triangular pediments to the flanking bays; the elevation terminates with a stone balustrade to the centre and gables to the flanking bays.

The elevations to Wardour Street and Berwick Street are in a similar style but comprise only four storeys. The fenestration is simpler, lacking the bow, though it follows the Oxford Street arrangement of semi-circular headed windows to the first floor and sash windows above. Similar motifs appear, including pilasters with alternating quoins, cartouche capitals, carved laurel wreaths and dentil cornices. The ground floor shop fronts are modern but respect the historic openings. A second entrance to the building survives on the Berwick Street elevation with a semi-circular moulded surround.

The main entrance on Oxford Street leads into a barrel-vaulted hall with plasterwork ceiling opening onto a staircase with marble-clad walls in green marble with inlaid cream panels and a brass handrail. This staircase rises to the first floor, where little historic fabric survives beyond the stair itself and a secondary stone staircase serving the Berwick Street entrance. The secondary staircase rises through the full height of the building unaltered, retaining its decorative iron balustrade and moulded timber handrail. A lift shaft has been inserted into the main staircase's stairwell, making the survival of metal balusters more fragmentary at lower levels. The second, third and fourth floors follow a standard plan with the original arrangement whereby many small rooms are accessed from an arched corridor running along the top of the T-shaped building. A number of original door-cases with floral carved detailing in their entablatures survive, as do original doors with lugged panels. A third staircase, possibly serving as a fire escape, is a wrought iron spiral staircase with barley sugar balusters and decorative treads.

The building occupies plots from four earlier buildings—two facing Oxford Street, one facing Wardour Street and one facing Berwick Street. The 1875 Ordnance Survey map shows interconnection between one of the Oxford Street buildings and the building facing Wardour Street, suggesting they may have been in the same ownership before further properties were acquired and the land redeveloped. In the early twentieth century, several blocks of Oxford Street's small narrow shops were bought up and redeveloped as single buildings, of which Selfridges is the best-known example. The developers of Pembroke House may have harboured grander ambitions to acquire the entire block, but only four properties were purchased, resulting in this unusual arrangement with three facades on three different streets.

The original use combined a shop on Oxford Street with a garage running along the ground floor of the cross of the T with frontages on both Berwick and Wardour Streets, with offices above. The garage was operated by Frederick Webster and Co, motor car dealers. Various tenants occupied the office space, including the Confederation Life Association, a glass and china dealer, an electricity company, theatrical managers, advertising agents, surveyors, Christian Science practitioners, draughtsmen and photographers. The occupant of the Oxford Street shop itself is unclear.

Simpson and Ayrton became partners in 1905 and designed numerous significant buildings over their twenty years together until the practice disbanded in 1928, including the former Wembley Stadium and Roedean School in Brighton, along with various commercial buildings and houses including the last large private house built in the West End at 23 St James's Place in 1929-30. This building demonstrates their skill in designing prestigious commercial premises combining shops and offices with carefully composed facades and good carved detailing.