Royal Academy Of Music

The Royal Academy of Music is an academy building constructed between 1910 and 1911 by Sir Ernest George and Alfred B Yeates. It is built of red brick with generous stone dressings, a channelled stone ground floor, and a stone-faced centrepiece, all beneath slate roofs. The building has a large, symmetrical design, resembling a scaled-up version of an English Baroque country house. It comprises a five-storey centre block with dormers in its steeply hipped roof, and wings with a ground floor set upon a podium and a double-height upper storey.

The centre block is six windows wide, with a two-window centrepiece and three-bay wings. The centrepiece’s ground floor is built out to form a large porch, featuring a semicircular arched entrance with a keystone, and a first-floor sill band that continues as a cornice. The windows have recessed glazing bars, with semicircular arched tops and keystones on the ground floor. The first to third floors have vertically linked stone architraves and aprons, with bold segmental pediments over the windows in the flanking bays on the second floor, and triangular pediments in the centrepiece. The attic storey has segmented arched windows in the centrepiece, and stone-framed corniced and keyed oeil-de-boeuf windows in the flanking bays. Rusticated quoins are present. The main floors of the centrepiece are flanked by giant Ionic pilasters rising to a deep entablature that extends across the block and returns to the sides, and an attic eaves cornice with a bold segmental pediment on consoles over the centrepiece. This pediment contains an oeil-de-boeuf window framed by two large reclining figures. Casemented dormers are present, along with symmetrically grouped, tall, stone-banded and corniced chimney stacks.

The wings balance but differ slightly; the left-hand wing has a central, vertically linked stone architrave, a first-floor window, and a second-floor console pedimented half dormer, flanked by carved panels. The right-hand wing (which houses Duke's Hall) has an advanced quoined and pedimented centrepiece with semicircular arched windows. Both wings have angle quoins, vases on the parapets, and steep, almost pyramidal slate roofs, with the same tall chimney stacks as the main block.