Royal United Services Institute

TQ 3080 SW CITY OF WESTMINSTER WHITEHALL SW1 83/79 Royal United Services 5.2.70 Institute GV II* Institute. 1893-95 by Aston Webb and Ingress Bell. Portland stone front, in keeping with Banqueting Hall, and rear of yellow brick with stone dressings, slate roof. Free Baroque with restrained, relatively small scale detailing. 4 storeys. 4 windows wide with a polygonal turret crowned by small cupola to corner of south return; narrow, recessed, one bay link with Banqueting Hall. Rusticated ground floor and banded 1st floor forming podium with central shallow relief Gibbs surround doorway. Recessed glazing bar sashes; 1st floor windows with banding broken forward over their architraves and bowed sills and aprons; 2nd floor windows semicircular arched with enriched keys and framed by Ionic pilasters carrying dosserets and steep open pediments; 3rd floor architraved windows have coupled lights with dividing colonettes and pilaster jambs. 1st floor plat band; cornice and pseudo-parapet to 2nd floor and sill band to 3rd floor, both framed by spaced quoining; deep frieze carved in relief with badges and putti; bracketed main cornice and balustraded parapet. The polygonal turret has banding and rustication as on front, the 2nd floor lights framed by colonettes and the 3rd floor ones with segmental pediments; colonnetted stone domed cupola. Rear elevation, less inhibited by the context of the Banqueting Hall, has a very large and prominent 2 storey bow with 2-light close set windows,those on 1st floor in pilaster frames with entablatures; cornice and balustraded parapet. The Builders' Journal (A.J./A.R.); Vol I, 1895

Listing NGR: TQ3017380040