Zimbabwe House

CITY OF WESTMINSTER STRAND WC2 TQ 3080 NW 72/118 No 429 (Zimbabwe House, formerly listed as 5.2.70 Rhodesia House) GV II* High Commission offices. 1906-08 by Charles Holden as partner in Adams and Holden, for the British Medical Association and originally with letting shops on the ground floor. Grey Cornish granite and Portland stone cladding steel frame, slate roof. Exceptional neo-Mannerist design with classical motifs and forms deployed with the freedom allowed by the stone cladding of the structural frame. Corner block. 5 storeys and dormered mansard, the top 2 storeys in Portland stone slightly recessed. 2 windows to Strand, canted corner and 7-window return to Agar Street. Main entrance in centre of Agar Street front with isolated architrave and inset Doric columns; the doorway and the ground and 1st floor windows are contained in sharply cut semi- circular arched recesses between broad pilaster-piers - transomed ground floor display windows and on 1st floor a tripartite variant on Venetian or thermal window with small plane glazing and slender Doric columns; the pilaster piers rise through breaks in block cornice to flank complex, planar, tripartite 2nd floor composition of niches and windows, the niches containing the contentious and subsequently mutilated standing figures sculpted by Jacob Epstein. The pilaster theme is continued in the Portland stone of 3rd floor but in shallower relief and more fragmentary form whilst with the recession of the 4th floor they become buttress-piers, 2 of them developed as chimney stacks. The entrance bay is slightly emphasised by the doubling up of the pilaster theme. Horizontal stratification emphasised by block cornices and sill cornices. Edwardian Architecture and its Origins; Alistair Service, editor. London 1900: Alistair Service Architectural Design; Vol; 48, Nos. 5-6; Gavin Stamp

Listing NGR: TQ3028080640