Royal United Services Institute

The Royal United Services Institute is a building constructed between 1893 and 1895 by architects Aston Webb and Ingress Bell. It features a Portland stone front that harmonizes with the nearby Banqueting Hall, while the rear is made of yellow brick with stone dressings and has a slate roof. The design is in the Free Baroque style, characterized by restrained and relatively small-scale detailing.

The building stands four storeys high and is four windows wide, with a polygonal turret topped by a small cupola at the corner of the south return. There is a narrow, recessed, one-bay link to the Banqueting Hall. The ground floor is rusticated, and the first floor is banded, creating a podium effect with a central doorway surrounded by a shallow relief Gibbs surround. The windows are recessed glazing bar sashes; those on the first floor have banding that projects over their architraves, along with bowed sills and aprons. The second-floor windows are semicircular arched with enriched keys and framed by Ionic pilasters that support dosserets and steep open pediments. The third-floor windows are architraved and feature coupled lights with dividing colonettes and pilaster jambs.

Additional architectural details include a plat band on the first floor, a cornice and pseudo-parapet on the second floor, and a sill band on the third floor, all framed by spaced quoining. The deep frieze is carved in relief with badges and putti, while the main cornice is bracketed and the parapet is balustraded. The polygonal turret mirrors the front's banding and rustication, with the second-floor lights framed by colonettes and the third-floor lights featuring segmental pediments, topped with a colonnetted stone domed cupola.

The rear elevation is less constrained by the surrounding context of the Banqueting Hall and includes a prominent two-storey bow with closely set two-light windows. The first-floor windows are framed by pilasters with entablatures, and there is a cornice and balustraded parapet above.