No. 120 Pall Mall
No. 120 Pall Mall (Plate 273c) was built in
1929–31 as a show-room and offices for Crane
Limited, a Canadian firm of heating and sanitary
engineers, and its British subsidiary, Messrs.
Crane-Bennett Limited. The architect was Sir
Edwin Lutyens (ref. 6) and the contractors were Messrs.
Holloway Bros. (London), Limited. (ref. 7) The site
had previously been occupied by two houses, Nos.
120 and 121 Pall Mall, the former having been
the premises of the French Gallery.
The builders found the sub-soil so treacherous
that although work was begun in the latter part of
1929, both the main demolition and the rebuilding
had to be delayed for a year while the foundations
of the adjoining structures were secured. (ref. 8) The
new building was completed late in 1931. (ref. 9)
The basement, ground and first floors were
designed as show-rooms, with a visitors' lounge in
the mezzanine at the back. The other floors were
to be let separately as offices. Lutyens also designed two model bath-rooms for the displays and
furniture for the visitors' lounge. (ref. 10) The maple
leaf in the pediment of the façade seems to have
been a later addition to the design. (ref. 8)
In August 1932 the firm vacated the premises,
which were taken over in 1936 by the present
occupants, the Holland America Line (London)
Limited. (ref. 3)
The building makes good use of the site, deep
but narrow-fronted, with five office floors, all
about ten feet high, above a lofty show-room
having the main staircase and mezzanine gallery
on its east side, and a mezzanine room above its
south end. Lutyens's front is no mere clothing of
structural steel with Portland stone—it is a
masonry construction, with depth as well as height
and width, the composition is bold and full of
subtle relationships, and the details are exquisitely
precise. There are two lofty stages, the lower
forming a powerful base, dominated by the cavernous unmoulded arch of the show-room window,
asymmetrically placed and having the pedimented
doorway and a square mezzanine window on its
left, and a range of three deeply recessed windows
above. The piers between these windows serve as
a pedestal-plinth to the order which dresses the
two-storeyed upper stage, dividing it into three
bays—wide between narrow. Here Lutyens has
used his composite 'Delhi' order, with square
shafts at each end and three-quarter columns in
the middle, their slender plain shafts standing on
tall pedestals and supporting an unbroken entablature. The plain stone face of each bay contains
two windows, the lower placed immediately over
a recessed pedestal-apron, its die ornamented with
a plain disk set in a sunk oblong panel—a typical
Lutyens fingerprint. The ornamentation of the
capitals is continued as a decorative band across the
wall faces. Above the entablature is a simply
treated attic, its plain face containing three squat
windows, surmounted by a pedestal-parapet with
three groups of widely spaced, waisted balusters.
Behind this rises a recessed attic, with an accented
middle bay, the whole crowned by a triangular
pediment in the centre of which is carved a large
maple leaf above crossed palm branches. (ref. 11)