The Royal Automobile Club and
Nos. 83–85 (consec.) Pall Mall
Previous history of this site is described on pages 359–68
The Automobile Club of Great Britain and
Ireland was founded in 1897 'as a Society of
Encouragement for the motoring movement and
the motor and allied industries in the British
Empire'. (ref. 182) From 1900 to 1902 its premises were
at Whitehall Court, and from 1903 to 1911 at
No. 119 Piccadilly. (ref. 3) In 1907 the name of the
club was changed to the Royal Automobile
Club. (ref. 182) In the same year the club began
negotiations for the lease of part of the site of the
old War Office with a frontage of 228 feet to Pall
Mall, and in 1908 a building agreement with the
Commissioners of Woods and Forests was signed.
By September 1908 the site had been cleared and
excavations for the basement of the new building
were in progress. The architects were Messrs.
Mewès and Davis in conjunction with E. Keynes
Purchase. (fn. 183) Work was completed in the spring of
1911, the total cost exceeding £250,000. The
contractors were the Building Construction Company of Cockspur Street (Plates 125, 126). (ref. 184)
In 1911 the Commissioners of Woods and
Forests signed a building agreement with James
Gilbert, surveyor, which provided for the rebuilding of the premises (now Nos. 83–85 Pall Mall)
adjoining the west side of the Royal Automobile
Club. This site had a frontage of 91 feet and
had recently been vacated by the War Office. (ref. 185)
The architects of the new building, which was
completed in 1915, were Henry Metcalf and
Thomas R. Greig, and the contractors were
Leslie and Co. (ref. 186) The building was at first occupied by commercial users, most of whom were
connected with the motor industry. Part of it is
now occupied by the associates' department of the
Royal Automobile Club. (ref. 3)
Architectural description
After Rome and Venice had provided the
architectural prototypes for the great mid nineteenth-century club-houses in Pall Mall, it seems
only natural that the early twentieth century—the period of the 'Entente Cordiale' and the
hôtels-de-luxe of M. César Ritz—should have
turned to Paris for inspiration. The Royal Automobile Club certainly enriched the stylistic galaxy
of Pall Mall by adding their substantial clubhouse, a polished essay in the late French Renaissance manner. Their building, moreover, marked
an important stage in the development of clubhouses, for it contains not only the usual and
traditional accommodation, but offers its members
a large restaurant and recreational facilities such
as the swimming-bath, Turkish baths, a gymnasium and squash courts.
Planned in the Beaux-Arts tradition, with a
front to Pall Mall that owes something to Jules
Hardouin Mansart (Place Vendôme) and Jacques-Ange Gabriel (Place de la Concorde), and a front
to Carlton Gardens that recalls a château by le
Vau or François Mansart, the club-house was
designed by the internationally famous firm of
Mewès and Davis (in conjunction with E. Keynes
Purchase). French carvers and blacksmiths were
employed to give the exterior its authentically
Parisian quality.
With a frontage to Pall Mall of 228 feet and a
depth, in the centre, of 140 feet, the club has a
plan that looks well on paper and works well in
practice (Plate 125). The core of the design is a
large central vestibule of oval plan, surrounded by
a wide gallery at first-floor level. On the ground
floor this vestibule is approached by steps from a
spacious entrance hall, from which further steps
lead east to a reception-room, and west to the
strangers' room. Beyond the vestibule, and overlooking the garden on the south front, is a large
oblong and apse-ended lounge, somewhat like a
winter-garden, now used as a restaurant. From
the vestibule a short corridor branches east to the
restaurant, an oblong room divided by columned
screens into a large central compartment flanked
north and south by smaller compartments. A
balancing corridor leads west, past the staircasecompartment, to the main club-room, of similar
size and layout to the restaurant. On the first
floor, the members' dining-room is over the
restaurant (east) and the committee-room, associates' room and library are over the main club-room (west). The recreational rooms are in the
basement—the swimming-bath below the lounge
(south), the Turkish baths below the restaurant,
and the gymnasium and three squash courts are
under the main club-room. The four upper floors
are given over to members' bedrooms and staff
rooms.
The Pall Mall front (Plate 126a), carried out in
Portland stone, is a balanced composition with a
central feature of three bays projecting between
wings, each six bays wide. The ground-storey face
is simply rusticated, the wings being arcaded, with
plain coved reveals framing the recessed casement
windows. In the central feature is a handsome
doorcase, surmounted by a balcony resting on rich
consoles, and flanked by narrow straight-headed
windows. The two upper storeys are embraced by
an Ionic order with plain-shafted columns raised
on unmoulded pedestals, engaged three-quarter
columns being employed in the wings and freestanding columns in the central feature, where the
entablature is enriched with a carved pulvinated
frieze, broken by a tablet in the middle bay and
surmounted by a triangular pediment, its tympanum filled with figure sculpture. The wide
piers that flank the central feature and terminate
the wings are adorned with oval cartouches and
pendant trophies, and over them the entablature
frieze is also carved. The tall casement windows
of the first floor open to balconies, their balustrades
linking the column pedestals, and each opening is
dressed with a moulded architrave, plain frieze
and moulded cornice. The second-floor windows
have panelled aprons and architrave frames with
moulded keystones. In each wing the main
entablature has a plain frieze and is surmounted by
a balustrade, and over each wide terminal pier is a
tall pedestal supporting an iron flambeau-vase.
The south, or garden front (Plate 126b) is more
boldly modelled than the north, but the projecting
oblong mass of the two-storeyed lounge has the
effect of being an addition, largely obscuring the
recessed central range of the main building. Each
of the projecting end pavilions has an arcaded
ground storey, like the north front, but the upper
face is more simply embellished with plain-shafted
Doric pilasters flanking the three middle bays.
Above the entablature is an attic storey, broken
centrally by a tall pediment-crowned window, this
feature recurring in the central pavilion. The tall
French roof, domed over the central pavilion,
contains two tiers of recessed dormers, and is hung
with green slates and dressed with copper, now
much patinated.
The well-laid-out interior presents a series of
handsome rooms that typify the heyday of the
'Period' decorator, whose task it was to clothe in
faultless period dress the monotonous regularity of
structural steel, the ventilation ducts, and much
else. The restrained classicism of Louis XV's
time pervades the entrance hall, the oval vestibule,
the corridors and the grand staircase, with walls
lined in 'stuc' to imitate creamy stone, providing a
background to the black-and-gold ironwork. This
treatment is typical of Mewès and Davis's 'French'
style. The upper stage of the oval vestibule is a
peristyle of fluted Doric columns, carrying an
entablature enriched with triglyphs and metopes,
and the ceiling is a plain cove surrounding a laylight of glass and wrought iron. The lounge, or
concert-room, was decorated by Boulanger, of
Paris, in the Louis XIV manner, with the walls
divided into bays, wide and narrow alternately, by
paired Ionic pilasters carrying a Baroque entablature and a cove pierced with bull's-eye windows.
The flat ceiling, painted as a sky surrounded by a
perspective balustrade, lacks interest through the
absence of flying figures. Lenygon and Morant,
of London, were responsible for the great club-room, where the sumptuous decorative scheme
incorporates a careful reproduction of the rich
entablature and compartmented ceiling, suitably
enlarged, from the south-west drawing-room in
Brettingham's Cumberland House. The restaurant and the adjoining reception-room were
decorated in the Louis XV style by Remon, of
Paris, who built their scheme around some paintings in the manner of Hubert Robert, taken from
a French château. The members' dining-room is
in the style of Sir William Chambers, with an
Ionic order, the billiard-room is in a simple Adam
manner, and the swimming-bath has a Roman
effect, although officially described as Greek, with
the pool surrounded by a peristyle of widely
spaced pairs of Doric columns, their shafts covered
with scale-patterned mosaic. (ref. 184)