Methodist Central Hall, Westminster

The Methodist Central Hall in Westminster is a prominent London Methodist hall built between 1905 and 1911 by architects Lanchester and Rickards. It features a Portland stone facade, an early reinforced concrete frame using the Kahn system, and a steel trussed lead-clad square dome. The building is symmetrically designed as a free-standing monumental block in a sophisticated Continental Baroque style, characterized by square masses and a giant Corinthian order that culminates in a massive square French dome. The walls exhibit French banded rustication.

The structure has a grand main storey and a tall attic, elevated on a basement and ground floor. It includes Corinthian columned corner pavilions with attics and a projecting centerpiece at the entrance front, featuring an engaged colonnade within a central bow. This bow has a main central enriched architrave portal and side entrances leading to the vestibule. Tall windows are adorned with oeil de boeuf or relief panels reminiscent of the work of Gabriel. The tall attics above the set-back hall are accentuated by tetrastyle porticoes in antis and shallow segmental pediments above the parapets.

The building is topped with a vast, enriched ribbed lead dome, featuring an oeil de boeuf and finished with a balustrade and an elaborate aediculed cupola. The exterior is richly decorated with sculptural mouldings, cornices, urns, and trophies. Inside, Lanchester designed a skilled layout with the raised hall surrounded by offices and rooms on all four sides. A spectacular Baroque grand staircase, with a French scrollworked bronze balustrade, rises dramatically from the vestibule in two flights, meeting and then dividing again in a lofty compartment to return to hall level. The grand hall is topped with a vast coffered saucer dome.