Brook'S Club (South Of Number 60)

TQ 2980 SW 81/113

CITY OF WESTMINSTER ST. JAMES'S STREET SW1 (West side) Brook's Club (South of No 60)

24-2-58

GV I Gentlemen's Club, 1778 by Henry Holland; his first major commission. Fine white Suffolk brick with stone dressings, slate roof. Restrained neo-Classical design of the Chambers school.

Three storeys and basement. Five bay front with podium, ground floor having off-centre doorway with stone architrave and cornice, plainly recessed glazing bar sashes under flat gauged arches. Plat band over ground floor from which rises a two storey giant stone order of Corinthian pilasters, coupled to corners, articulating the window bays and supporting an entablature with delicate frieze, dentilled and bracketed cornice, the centre three bays pedimented with oval relief in tympanum and flanking, balustraded parapet with urns. The first floor windows have alternating segmental and triangular pediments. Three window return to Park Place has similar pilaster and cornice treatment with pedimented first floor window flanked by Venetian windows to end bays. Extension to left, 1889, in plainer manner with rectangular bay windows, by MacVicar Anderson. Good cast iron area railings. Rear of original block has two full height bows.

Interior has remodelled staircase under glass dome and two very fine upper rooms; the Subscription Room with carved ceiling, one of the side Venetian windows and restrained, severely simplified elegant decoration by comparison with Adam work of same date. The adjoining Venetian windowed room shows equal restraint and the centre of rear wall is apsed. Behind one of the rear bows there is a circular room on each floor.

Survey of London; vol XXX

Listing NGR: TQ2919380272