The County Fire Office

TQ 2980 NW & NE CITY OF WESTMINSTER REGENT STREET Wl 70/90; 71/3 (East side) 30-5-72 No 50 (The County Fire Office) GV II Grand office block. Part of Sir Reginald Blomfield's 1910-1923 grandiose rebuilding of Nash's Regent Street Quadrant qv: By Ernest Newton, completed 1924. Stone faced, with slate roof. Classical details, design complementary and a variant on Blomfield's. Circus facade to former Swan & Edgar's store (Nos 9 to 18 Piccadilly). Tall podium carrying 3 storeys and an attic storey. 3 wide bays. Pulvinated and channelled podium with open semicircular arched arcade over pavement. 3 storeys above,ashlar faced with giant rusticated pilaster strips, the windows vertically linked through storeys and read as tall openings - segmented headed and hooded. Rich modillion cornice. The attic storey is elaborately swagged and festooned with oculi and has a stepped blocking course above its cornice rising in the centre to a rectangular block surmounted by a sculptural group of Britannia and lion. Behind rises a corniced drum with a copper dome and gilded finial. The drum is flanked by monumental stone stacks. The main facade to Piccadilly Circus closes the vista up Lower Regent Street. A one bay return to right forms the link with the plainer facade in Glasshouse Street.

Listing NGR: TQ2951080680