63, Harley Street

This building was constructed in 1934 as a combined residence and consulting rooms for the celebrated ophthalmic surgeon Sir Stewart Duke-Elder. It was designed by the architectural practice Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie, with lighting designed by Waldo Maitland. The building has undergone minor later alterations.

Exterior

Number 63 Harley Street occupies the site of a former Georgian terraced house, and its three-window bay façade echoes the building it replaced. The structure comprises four storeys plus basement and attic with dormer windows. It has a steel frame with ashlar facing to Harley Street, brick to the rear, and a slate roof.

The detailing and proportions of the Harley Street frontage are classical in character, featuring a piano nobile (principal floor), upper storeys of diminishing heights, and a dentil cornice. The windows are bronze casements with external shutters on the fourth floor. However, modern elements appear within this classical composition: notably the continuous sill of the fourth-floor windows and the door's capital-less fluted columns, which are Art Deco in style.

Traditional iron railings bound the basement area, with panels of Art Deco ironwork to either side of the entrance step. The swirl-and-zigzag motif is based on the figure 63. The same motif is repeated in the grille of the bronze and glass double doors and in a fanlight where the swirls and zigzags form a '63'. The ironwork along the continuous piano nobile balcony follows a different, geometric design made up of horizontal rectangles.

The detailing is restrained, with no mouldings to the upper floor windows and only very simple ones to those of the ground and first floors. This approach was described in the Architect and Building News as 'the modern manner at its best'. The façade bears an English Heritage Blue Plaque to Sir Stewart Duke-Elder, added in 2002.

Interior

The original plans of the house were published in the architectural press, allowing the identification of rooms by their original functions.

Ground Floor

The ground floor contains an entrance hall and waiting room (now opened out into a single room), a secretary's room, Sir Stewart Duke-Elder's consulting room, and a cloakroom and WC.

The entrance hall is panelled in sycamore in part, with doors and skirting in walnut. There is a panelled alcove with bamboo plinth designed to house a sculpture or (as shown in historic photographs) a vase, lit from below. The ceiling has a slender fluted cornice and shallow, rectangular mouldings. The original light fitting, also a shallow rectangle which throws light up onto the ceiling, survives. The interior lighting scheme was designed by Waldo Maitland and is an important feature of all the principal rooms.

The main stair is located in the entrance hall. It has a solid balustrade with wood capping and brass handrail. The bottom steps radiate out with curved corners, their treads in a different coloured wood to the risers, and the step's profile is traced in the walnut skirting of the wall. There is a radiator grille set under the stairs with the same ironwork pattern as the outside door, and a further two radiators at either side of the vestibule, all in bronze. The vestibule also contains fixed umbrella holders, inset light panels in the ceiling, and bronze doors.

Off the entrance hall is the original lift, its motor housed in the attic. The secretary's room retains its fixed index-card filing cabinet and drawers. The cloakroom also has fixed furniture, and the WC retains an original sink. The adjoining former waiting room retains some of its original panelling and a fireplace.

The consulting room is located to the rear of the building where it abuts a neighbouring property. Next to the back wall, in what is the darkest part of the building, the office is part-partitioned off to create a dark room for examining eye patients. This is panelled and retains its original lights.

The main consulting space is lit by a large window overlooking an inner light well in the centre of the building. This wall is dramatically curved, as is the window which has metal glazing bars and bent glass. The curved shape is matched in the room's cornice, ceiling mouldings, the consultant's kidney-shaped desk, and the saucer-shaped skylight. The latter was designed to diffuse natural light in the room, obviating the need for additional artificial light.

The room is panelled in Australian walnut with skirting and cappings of Macassar ebony, and there are several built-in book cases. One wall contains an alcove lined with lights and mirrors in a brass frame. There is a marble fireplace with fluted reveals and a curved window seat.

A similarly dynamic space is the elliptical staircase leading from the corridor outside Sir Stewart's consulting room to that of his wife on the floor above. This has a brass handrail and metal balustrade, and each tread is in a different type of wood to the main risers and the string. The ceiling, despite the stair only running up one floor, echoes the stair's profile with each step illuminated by specially-placed lighting. The panelling also contains shallow vertical pleating stepping back along the wall.

First Floor

The first floor contains the former dining room and Sir Stewart's library. The latter has a fluted architrave to the door, built-in book shelves, desk, window seat, and fireside seats. Both rooms have original fireplaces, fluted vertical moulding to the walls, and a coved cornice to the ceiling.

The dining room fireplace is in a recessed bay, with concealed down-lighting from above. There is further concealed up-lighting in the cornice. The proportions of the dining room have been disrupted by a modern kitchen that has been inserted into its corner and the adjoining former service room.

The first floor landing contains built-in cupboards, and there are panels of lights in brass surrounds set into the ceiling next to these cupboards.

Upper Floors

Sir Stewart's former bedroom, dressing room, bathroom, and breakfast room are located on the second floor and all retain some original fittings including drawers and cupboards in the bedroom and a bathroom suite.

The third floor contains a guest bedroom and servants' rooms, the former with fitted cupboards and a surviving bathroom suite. There are other maids' rooms on the top floor, accessed by a separate concrete staircase. There are two butlers' pantries with original sinks and a laundry cupboard on the upper floors.

History

Number 63 Harley Street was both residence and consulting rooms for Sir Stewart Duke-Elder (1898-1978) and his wife, Lady Phyllis Mary née Edgar, herself an ophthalmologist. Here Sir Stewart attended to his many high-profile clients, who included prime minister J Ramsay MacDonald on whom he operated for glaucoma in 1932.

Sir Stewart was surgeon-oculist to the royal family for 29 years—to Edward VIII, George VI, and Elizabeth II—and consultant ophthalmic surgeon to the army in the Second World War. As well as authoring the definitive work on his subject, the 'Text-Book of Ophthalmology', he was instrumental in the inauguration of the faculty of ophthalmologists at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1945 and the founding of the Institute of Ophthalmology in London in 1948. Knighted in 1933, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1960, a distinction rarely awarded to a clinician.

An English Heritage blue plaque on the building's exterior, erected in 2002, commemorates Sir Stewart Duke-Elder's connection with 63 Harley Street. Sir Stewart lived and worked here from 1934 until 1963, when the building was sold to fellow ophthalmic surgeon Sir Allen Goldsmith. Duke-Elder continued to work at this address until his retirement in 1976.

The Architects

Architects Edmund Wimperis and William Begg Simpson were in partnership from 1913, joined by Leonard Rome Guthrie in 1925 just as the firm had won a competition for the rebuilding of Fortnum & Masons, Piccadilly. Their style was eclectic, in common with many architectural practices in the interwar years, ranging from traditional (as at Fortnum & Masons) to modern (offices at 1-4 Leicester Square of 1937-8, for example).

The practice designed the Cambridge Theatre, Seven Dials, London (Grade II), an early London example of the Moderne, expressionist style pioneered in Germany during the 1920s, and several private houses in Mayfair, the latter secured through Wimperis' position as an architect to the Grosvenor Estate.