The Reform Club

TQ 2980 SE CITY OF WESTMINSTER PALL MALL, SW1 82/66 (south side) 5.2.70 No. 104: The Reform Club G.V. I Gentlemen's Club, 1837-41 by Charles Barry. Portland stone ashlar, with rusticated quoins, low pitched tiled roof. The mature accomplishment of Barry's palazzo style first introduced by him at the Travellers' Club next door. 2 main storeys and attic storey, on podium-basement. 9 windows wide with 8-window west return and garden elevation repeating entrance front. Central entrance, approached by flight of steps, has tall, Peruzzi-inspired Roman doorway with eared architrave and carved jambs, rich double consoles supporting dentilled and modillioned cornice-hood. Recessed original casement windows, those on ground floor in architraves rising from pedestal-course with console-flanked apron panels below and consoled cornices above; the 1st floor windows treated as Ionic columned and pedimented aedicules also rising from pedestal-course with shallow, console bracketed balustered balconettes, their bases as forward breaks in the ground floor cornice; architraved attic casements with sills breaking from sill course; the whole front finished off with a finely carved great Roman eaves cornice carried all the way round. Tall panelled chimney stacks with bracketed cornices. Stone balustrade to area raised on rusticated plinth with 2 iron lampstandards surmounting the dies flanking steps. To left is a slightly recessed 2 storey, 1-window wide extension with rusticated semicircular arched doorway and 1st floor balustrade to set back 1st floor. The grand club interior also conceived in the Italian manner, organised about a central almost square saloon "cortile" with coved glazed roof, the ambulatories on both floors screened by a 2 storey peristyle with Corinthian yellow marble columns above Ionic ground floor ones; Italian Renaissance staircase rising between solid walls to return in 2 flights; magnificent library behind the garden front divided into 3 sections by columns; morning room with half-size copy of the Parthenon frieze; splendidly rich colour scheme; much of original furniture as designed by Barry etc. (Loose items of furniture not covered by listing.) Following the Travellers' Club, a most influential design. Survey of London; Vol. XXIX.

Listing NGR: TQ2963780274