17 And 19, Clare Street

Nos. 17 and 19 Clare Street are attached offices dating to 1899, designed by Alfred Waterhouse for the Prudential Assurance Company. The building is constructed of red terracotta and pink granite, with a Cornish slate hexagonal pyramidal roof topped with a ridge stack and hexagonal finials. It is built to a double-depth plan. The architectural style is a French Loire Chateau Revival. The building is three storeys high, with an attic and basement, and has a four-window range.

The building forms a symmetrical block on three sides of a corner site, featuring drum towers with conical roofs and lead finials at the corners. The facade includes a plain granite plinth with roll mouldings under the windows, sill bands, friezes, and cornices to each floor. A dentil cornice projects forward above the window jambs, and there's a panelled parapet. The right-hand semicircular-arched doorway has billet moulding within a chamfered reveal, set within a moulded gable flanked by large consoles featuring foliate faces and castellate finials, with a dated cartouche above. Windows are set within raised, full-height sections, paired in the centre, and narrower two-light windows above the doorway. Architraves incorporate billet mouldings, pilaster jambs to the upper floors display floriate panels and crocket capitals, and the second floor incorporates panelled aprons. The first floor has a mullion window, while the second floor features cross windows. Dormers are large, two-light, semicircular-arched, with pilaster jambs; the outer dormers have gables with pedimented top blocks, and a central tripartite gable with consoles and a segmental pediment. The rear elevation is similar in design, and the left return is fenestrated like the central section. Side and rear elevations feature plain basement openings. The towers have three small, ground-floor windows set flat along the tower’s curve, each with a swan's neck pediment, and single cross windows above. Plate-glass sashes are used throughout. A large central stack has angle buttresses, central semicircular arches, and its own cornice.

The interior includes a dogleg entrance staircase with foliate wrought-iron railings, and pale green moulded glazed tiled wainscot incorporating Art Nouveau patterns and a fluted reeded frieze. There are six-panel doors and eared fire surrounds with green tiles. This is Alfred Waterhouse's sole building in Bristol; he was the Prudential's architect.