37-43 Park Street

This is a grand terrace of speculative town houses built between 1908 and 1910 by W.D. Caröe. The building is constructed of Portland stone and red brick, with slate roofs. It combines Free Style Baroque elements, drawing from Franco-Flemish, English, and Danish Baroque styles, and is designed as a single terrace unit while also appearing as two linked pavilions due to the two mansard roofs, the bridged gap, and a change from stone to brick with stone dressings between number 37 and numbers 39-43.

The building has three storeys, a basement, and three tiers of dormered attics beneath a steep mansard roof. Number 37 has a symmetrical three-bay front with the centre advanced and topped by a large segmental pediment. It features a triple window link with an open colonnaded second floor and a bridge across to numbers 39-43 at attic level. Numbers 39-43 are treated as a nine-bay block with a quoined three-bay centre break, also crowned by a segmental pediment, which is larger in radius than that of number 37. The overall design presents a unity of disparity, articulated by a giant order of quoin and party wall pilasters with cartouches below the caps, a continuous entablature with a prominent cornice, and the relative symmetry of the segmental pediments. The centre bay of number 37 features an asymmetrically placed enclosed stone porch with a stone domed roof and a richly carved archivolt surmounted by a pediment. Numbers 39 and 41 have similar brick and stone porches with deep parapets instead of a dome, and wreathed oeil de boeufs on the sides. Number 43 has a semicircular arched recessed porch to the right. Casement windows with large square leaded panes are set within architraves. A single-storey balustraded bow window extends from the ground floor of number 37’s link, while two-storey bows are present on the ground and first floors of numbers 39-43, where the third-floor casements are flush set. The segmental pediments contain hexagonal windows flanked by segmental arches, ones framed by richly sculpted garlands. There are pedimented segmental arched and barrel vaulted dormers, and prominent chimney stacks.

The return elevations to Culross Street and Upper Grosvenor Street are in a similar vein, but on a smaller scale. The left-hand three bays of the Upper Grosvenor Street elevation originally formed the fifth house of the development. Elaborate cast iron area railings with openwork square standards are present. The interiors are ornate and more conventional, featuring "Louis XVI" and "Early Georgian" detailing.