Vigo House Vigo House, Empire House, Westmorland House And New Gallery

Vigo House, Empire House, Westmorland House and New Gallery form a block of offices, shops and former cinema on the west side of Regent Street in Westminster, occupying Nos 115 to 131 (odd) and including Nos 2 to 4 Vigo Street.

The building was constructed between 1920 and 1925 by Sir J J Burnet and Thomas Tait. The New Gallery cinema was added around 1925 by C F Nicholas and J E Dixon-Spain for Provincial Cinematograph Theatres, replacing and incorporating parts of a smaller 1913 cinema.

This is the least Beaux Arts-influenced of the 1920s Regent Street facades, displaying inventive classicism with slightly Art Deco details. The structure rises five storeys with an attic storey and comprises fourteen bays with three-bay curved corners surmounted by domes. The principal facing is Portland stone with a slate roof.

The ground floor has been altered with mid and later twentieth-century shop fronts, but the central entrance survives, featuring a parabolic arched doorway leading to the New Gallery. The first floor has coupled metal casement windows with fine Art Deco bronze balconettes. The upper floors display recessed window bays with metal casements. The curved corners of the block feature giant Tuscan engaged columns rising through the second, third and fourth floors, which carry the main entablature running across the block. Above the corners stand short drums bearing sculptured figures by Reid Dick, topped by squat, rather Byzantine copper domes. A deep blocking course with stepped chunky blocks runs across the block. The green slate roof has copper gutters with bronze lion masks.

The New Gallery contains an unusual and virtually complete survival of a 1920s silent cinema interior. This includes the oldest surviving Wurlitzer organ in Britain. The auditorium features panelled walls with a domed and coffered ceiling, a balcony, and rectangular grilles flanking the proscenium arch.