99a, Charing Cross Road

99A Charing Cross Road (also known as 1 & 3 Old Compton Street) is a commercial building completed in 1907 to designs of 1904 by architect CH Worley, built speculatively by property developer T Stevens.

The five-storey neo-Baroque corner building sits at the junction of Charing Cross Road and Old Compton Street. It is distinguished by its striking exterior treatment: the principal elevations are faced in contrasting bands of jade glazed brick and yellow sandstone, with the surfaces eccentrically and three-dimensionally detailed with closely-packed sandstone dressings. The building is topped by pitched slate roofs with dormer windows and features a square corner tower with a pyramidal roof and timber finial.

The architectural detailing is highly ornate. The angle tower has first and second-floor windows set in shallow, round-headed recesses with elongated voussoirs above; those on the second floor break through a chunky modillion cornice. The third floor windows are flanked by pairs of rusticated columns supporting great, open, segmental pediments; the fifth-storey windows are contained within their tympana. These details are repeated in the end entrance bay on the Old Compton Street return. Throughout, the window frames feature paired casements, large casements flanked with smaller marginal lights, or three-light mullions, all with oversized voussoirs. The first-floor windows have curved glazing bars echoing the pediment shapes.

The ground floor has been modernised with a contemporary shop front, though one original door on Old Compton Street survives with its moulded hood, voussoirs and quoins. Historic photographs show the main entrance was originally on a canted corner with a broken segmental pediment and a shop front divided by rusticated piers; only the dentil cornice above the fascia and a small section of Art-Nouveau-style decorative tiling on the Old Compton Street fascia remain visible from the earlier design.

The basement and ground floor interiors are entirely modern. Above this, the room arrangement is largely original, and the upper flights of the staircase survive with a square newel post and turned balustrade (the lower flights are concrete). Some window fixtures, doors and cornices typical of the period remain on the upper floors.

The design underwent revision after its initial publication in February 1904, following neighbours' objections about proposed oriel windows on the upper floors, which explains the delay before construction commenced. By 1910 the building was occupied by the Franco-British Electrical Company, vendors of electric advertisement signs, who were likely the first tenants.

CH Worley (1834–1906) was a relatively little-known architect who designed numerous houses, shops and offices in London's West End, including 3 Wimpole Street and 3 Soho Square (both Grade II listed), both corner buildings like this one. Worley was the brother of RJ Worley, also an architect, who designed Sicilian Avenue in Holborn, the London Pavilion (now part of the Trocadero) at Piccadilly Circus, and Albert Court, a mansion block adjacent to the Royal Albert Hall (all Grade II listed).