CHAPTER VIII - The Estate of Sir Charles Wheler and the Wilkes Family
This estate had formed that part of the
Spitalfields property of Sir William Wheler,
which in 1674 came into the possession of
Sir Charles Wheler of Birdingbury, Warwickshire,
a kinsman of Sir William's, and heir, by special
remainder, to his baronetcy. (ref. 1)
By his will, made in
1665 and proved in July 1667, (ref. 2)
Sir William had
left all his Spitalfields property, together with other
property, to Charles Wheler of Charing, Kent,
and his son George (later the Rev. Sir George
Wheler, knight), subject to his widow's life
interest. But although it does not appear in his
will, Sir William had evidently made provision, as
Sir George Wheler later conceded, for ’the
Devision of Spittlefields, out of which Sir Will,
had left six score pounds a year to go along with ye
Barronett for ever, and to be Divided by the
Chanceller’. (ref. 3)
To obtain this, Sir Charles chal
lenged Charles and (Sir) George Wheler's rights
under Sir William's will in a Chancery suit. Sir
George recorded his opinion of the judgment.
’The Lord Shaftesbury Decreed on our side, but
Did not stay in [the office of Lord Chancellor]
Long enough to finish the Devision of Spittle
fields. … But when Lord chancellor Finch was
made so,… having bene Sir Charles his Counsel
in ye cause, [he] Declared that if Sir Charles
could have no more than six score pounds per An.,
he wd make it the best six score he could’, and
therefore made such a division ’that ye Ground
rents for six score contained a far greater Quantity
of ground then the Remainds, whose then rents
was about four Hundred pounds per An’. Sir
George and his father accepted the judgment, ’ye
Lord Chancellor being Sir Charles his Friend’. (ref. 3)
The Chancery order was made on 31 March
1674. (ref. 4)
The part of Spitalfields to be divided lay
north of the line of Brown's Lane and Lamb
Street, being bounded on the east by Brick Lane
and on the north and west by the hamlet boundary.
Sir Charles's portion (fig. 27) comprised, in the
main, the south-eastern part of this ground. Its
western boundary north of the ditch dividing
Quaker Street from Great Pearl Street (now
Calvin Street) was approximately Grey Eagle
Street and Farthing Street: south of the ditch it
was Wheler Street. In its extreme south-east
corner it excluded a plot of ground on the northern
corner of Brown's Lane (Hanbury Street) and
Brick Lane (see pages 192–3). It included perhaps
more than half of Sir William Wheler's estate,
but not so clearly the greater part as Sir George
Wheler's words suggest.
This part of Sir William Wheler's property
had, like the rest, been first built up by Sir William
and his lessees in the 1650's and 1660's. In 1675
Sir Charles asked for licence to build on a few
undeveloped sites. Sir Christopher Wren reported favourably and in August licence was
granted. (ref. 5)
Comparison of Wren's plan appended
to the patent with Ogilby and Morgan's map of
1681–2 suggests that by the latter date some of the
sites had been filled.
In June 1680 Sir Charles mortgaged his
property for a thousand years to Elizabeth
Browne of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, to secure
£1,060. This mortgage appears subsequently to
have become an absolute lease. Elizabeth Browne
assigned it to Daniel Hough in trust for Ralph
Hardwick of London, merchant, and in January
1681–2 Hough assigned the mortgage in consideration of £1,600 to John, first Baron Ossulston. (ref. 6)
Hardwick and Hough borrowed a further
£200 from Lord Ossulston. In 1696 the first
Lord Ossulston's heir, Charles, brought a complaint in Chancery: the rents of the property were
said to be insufficient to pay the interest on the
£1,800 and to be expensive to collect ’being small
and in many particulars’. Hardwick and Hough
were also said to have let the property ’goe
to ruine’. In 1702 the defendants were ordered to
pay the outstanding debt, then amounting to
£2,254 16s. 6d., or lose possession. The money
was not paid and Lord Ossulston obtained possession. (ref. 7)
There was, however, further borrowing
between the parties on security of the property.
In March 1714/15 Lord Ossulston, who had
become first Earl of Tankervile of the second
creation, assigned the property to Thomas
Umfrevile, citizen and tin plate-worker, (fn. a) for
£1,570, Umfrevile having previously also paid
£1,183 1s. 8d. to Hardwick, whose heir conveyed
his interest to trustees for Umfrevile. (ref. 8)
Umfrevile
and his trustees promptly assigned the property to
Richard Brodrepp of South Mapperton, Dorset,
esquire, and his trustees. (ref. 9)
In December 1718 a
trustee for Brodrepp conveyed the property to
Edward Umfrevile of Fetter Lane, gentleman,
and Israel Wilkes, citizen and distiller of London. (ref. 10)
Wilkes, whose distillery was in Clcrken
well, was the father of the celebrated John Wilkes.
Figure 27:
The estate of Sir Charles Wheler and the Wilkes family, lay-out plan. Based on Horwood's map and on the
Ordnance Survey 1873–5
––––– Part of Sir William Wheler's estate inherited by Sir Charles Wheler
. . . . Part of Sir Charles. Wheler's inheritance owned by Israel Wilkes in late seventeenth century
------- Streets shown on Horwood's map
In the course of the next quarter of a century
or so Israel Wilkes and Umfrevile, or Wilkes
alone after Umfrevile's death, sold various parts
of the property, some to other members of the
Umfrevile family. These parts are not easily
identifiable but probably constituted all the
property lying west of Grey Eagle Street. (ref. 11)
French Church, Pearl Street
Pearl Street is now Calvin Street
Demolished
By 1697 Jacques Laborie, whose congregation
at l'Eglise de l'Artillerie had seceded in 1694, had
founded anew church in Pearl Street (now Calvin
Street). In 1699 some new scandal drove Laborie
to emigrate to America. The Pearl Street Church
continued until early in 1 701, when it united with
Crispin Street Church (ref. 12) (see page 138). It has
been suggested that the church occupied a site on
(he north side of Pearl Street, near Grey Eagle
Street, (ref. 13)
perhaps identifiable with the commercial
premises shown on Horwood's map of 1799.
No. 27 Jerome Street and Nos. 10 and 11 Calvin Street
Formerly No. 9 Little Pearl Street and Nos. 10 and 11
Great Pearl Street
Rate books suggest that these houses (Plate 73b)
may have been built between 1793 and 1803,
when they were held on lease by Charles Beek,
esquire, (ref. 14)
of Mile End New Town, probably
from Ann Williams of Lambeth, daughter of
Edward Williams of Bishopsgate Street, gentleman. In 1792 and 1793 Ann Williams had
granted building leases to other lessees of sites on
the west side of Jerome Street. (ref. 15)
Nos. 10 and 1 1 Calvin Street are paired houses
with mirrored plans, three storeys high, and the
fenestration in the plain stock brick front clearly
shows that they were built for weavers’ occupation.
The cement-faced ground storey contains the
doorway and a sashed window of normal proportions, above which is a wide sashed window of
three lights. In the top storey is a four-light
casement extending the full width of the frontage.
All the window openings have segmental-arched heads.
Nos. 15 and 16 Calvin Street
Formerly No. 15 Great Pearl Street
This building (fig. 28) was probably erected
between 1809 and 18l2. Between at least 1773
and 1803 a building on this site was occupied by
James Lewis Desormeaux, a black-silk dyer, (ref. 16)
who succeeded Abraham Desormeaux, also a
dyer. In 1786 he acquired the freehold of the
house and dyehouse on the site from the widow of
Edward Williams of Bishopsgate Street. (ref. 17) In
May 1809 Desormeaux conveyed the house and
dyehouse to Isabella and Francis (later Sir Francis)
Des Anges, dyer. (ref. 18)
Figure 28:
Nos. 15 and 16 Calvin Street, ? 1809–12,
front elevation
The present building apparently existed by
1812. (ref. 19) It was in dual occupation from the
beginning, one of the first occupants being the
firm of Hague and Topham, millwrights, who
had an iron-foundry in Grey Eagle Street with
which the back of Nos. 15–16 probably communicated. (ref. 20)
The elegance and generous scale of the early
nineteenth-century front are in striking contrast
with its humble setting. It is well built of yellow
and pink stock bricks, with a cement plinth and a
narrow bandcourse at first-floor level. Centred in
the lofty ground storey is a round-arched doorway
set in a marginal recess. On the left are two sash
windows with flat arches of gauged brick, and on
the right is another window, now altered, and a
smaller doorway which is furnished with a cobweb fanlight. There are three equally spaced
windows in the first storey and three in the second,
both tiers being set in three shallow recesses with
segmental heads of gauged brickwork. The
first-storey windows are dressed with wooden
architraves, the middle one being accented with
ramped jambs and a triangular pediment. Each
side window was doubtless finished with a cornice,
now missing. The top storey has been refronted
with, presumably, different fenestration.
The Wilkes Estate
The part of Sir Charles Wheler's inheritance
east and north of Grey Eagle Street was owned in
the mid-eighteenth century by the Wilkes family.
In 1743 the greater part, if not all, was owned by
Nathaniel Wilkes, nephew of Israel Wilkes, but
it is not known by what means the property
passed from Israel to his nephew rather than to his sons.
The section of the estate lying between Mon
mouth Street, Brick Lane, Black Eagle Street and
Quaker Street was partly occupied by the owners
of Truman's Brewery, to whom in 1743 Nathaniel
Wilkes granted a renewal of their lease, and who
by the end of the eighteenth century occupied the
whole of this section (see Chapter IX).
The main development on the Wilkes estate
was in the third quarter of the century, with the
piecemeal construction of a line of street as a continuation of Wood Street, on the Wood-Michell
estate, northward from Brown's Lane to King
Street. The four parts of the continuation,
marked by the crossing of Black Eagle Street,
Quaker Street and Phoenix Street, were named in
succession northward John Street, Wilkes Street,
Hope Street, and Vine Street. Part of Hope
Street and all of Vine Street have been obliterated
by the railway, and the others, together with
Wood Street, have been renamed Wilkes Street.
In November 1752, when the Spitalfields
Vestry had considered acquiring the Black Eagle
Street chapel for use as a workhouse, ’Mr. Wilks’
declined to grant a lease as 'he intended to make an
Open Street from Wood Street through the back
part of the premises'.21 In March of the following
year Nathaniel Wilkes, then of Wendon Lofts,
Essex, esquire, granted a ninety-nine-year lease to
John Lorrington of St. Mary Magdalen Bermondsey, bricklayer, of the piece of ground
bounded by Grey Eagle Street, Monmouth Street,
Black Eagle Street and Quaker Street. The witnesses included Samuel Worrall of Spitalfields,
gentleman. (ref. 22) It was not a building lease but by
December 1757 Wilkes Street had been built
through the centre of this plot, approximately on
the line of Hockenhull Court, and Lorrington
granted a lease of a house newly built by him at the
south-east corner of the street. (ref. 23)
The construction of Wilkes Street so close to
Monmouth Street necessitated the demolition of
the houses on the west side of that street, which
was henceforward occupied by the back gardens of
the houses on the east side of Wilkes Street.
John Street had been in contemplation in 1752
and would seem naturally to be the first part of the
continuation of Wood Street to be built, but was
not in fact constructed until the period between
1766 and 1773. It was perhaps built by John
Wilkes, a son of Nathaniel Wilkes who had died
between May 1758 and October 1759.
In his will Nathaniel left his Spitalfields estate
to trustees for his married daughter. (ref. 24) This bequest appears, however, not to have taken effect,
and building leases were granted in the 1760's
successively by his sons John and Hope Wilkes.
Some of these were not on the Wood Street line.
In 1761 John Wilkes, of Wendon Lofts, granted
leases of sites in Grey Eagle Street and Phoenix
Street to Thomas Holloway of Shoreditch, builder,
who had built new houses on them. (ref. 25) Two years
later he granted a lease of ground on the south side
of King Street and bounded by Brick Lane and
Monmouth Street to James Laverduer (or Laverdure) ’otherwise Green’, of Spitalfields, carpenter,
who was to build on the Brick Lane frontage. (ref. 26)
The northern continuation of the Wood-John-Wilkes Streets line was probably laid out in the
late 1760's or early 1770's. In 1765 Hope
Wilkes, of Wendon Lofts, granted a building lease
for eighty-seven and three-quarter years to
Thomas Vine of Spitalfields, carpenter. The site
lay west of Monmouth Street, and was bounded
north and south by King Street and Phoenix
Street. On this site Vine was to build within two
years sixteen or more houses, at a cost of at least
£1,500, and form a new street to be called Vine Street. The lease laid down details for the scant
lings and specified that there should be two courses
of bond timber in each storey. A wooden bar was
to be placed at each end of the street to prevent the
passage of carts and carriages, and only one 'public
alehouse or victualling house' was to be built on
the site. Five feet on each side of the new street
were to be paved with Purbeck stone within two
months of the erection of the houses. (ref. 27)
Vine had recently built houses and gardens
adjoining the site to the west, under lease from
Hope's brother John, forming the small square
called by Horwood Elizabeth's Court.
Vine Street was constructed at the northern
extremity of the line of street before ’Hope Street’
to its south was built. The latter appears to have
been built-up in the 1770's. Two houses were
built on the west side by Francis Garland in
March 1772. (ref. 28) Four more new houses were built
by ’Mr. Mooring’ in May 1777 and four more in
’Sauers Buildings’ on the west side by Jacob Sauer
in November 1781. (ref. 29)
In March 1782 Hope Wilkes granted a
seventy-year lease to Richard Wooding of Spital-fields, surveyor, (fn. b) and John May Evans of the same,
bricklayer, whereby they were to complete sixteen
new houses forming King Square, north of
Phoenix Street and west of Brick Lane. (ref. 30) Evans
was also responsible for building in the new Union
Street at about this time.
The date of the construction of Queen Street,
part of which survives as the cul-de-sac Sheba
Street, is not known. It is shown by Horwood in
1799 but not by Rocque in 1746.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
the character of the estate was altered by the
growth of Truman's Brewery, the construction of
the Eastern Counties Railway line, and the ex
pansion of this line by the Great Eastern Railway
Company.
In 1831 and 1842 leases to the brewery partners resulted in the absorption of most of the
estate east of Wilkes Street and south of Black
Eagle Street into the brewery by the late 1850's.
This leasehold estate was sold to the brewery
in 1904 (see page 119). Between 1839 and
1847 John Wilkes conveyed to the Eastern
Counties Railway Company that part of the estate
which lay north of Phoenix Street for the construction of the line to the Shoreditch terminus. (ref. 31)
In 1871, on the expansion of the line, further
property on the south of Phoenix Street was sold
to the Great Eastern Railway Company. (ref. 32) In
1876 ground south of this, abutting south on
Quaker Street, was sold to the Company for the
site of the Great Eastern Buildings (see below),
and in 1880 a piece of ground at the northern
extremity of the estate was sold for a further
expansion of the line. (ref. 33)
Black Eagle Street Chapel and
French Almshouses
Formerly l'Eglise de l'Hôpital
Demolished
In 1687 James II issued letters patent to the
French Church of Threadneedle Street, permitting the foundation of a chapel of ease in
Spitalfields. (ref. 34) The site of the new building was to
be a piece of ground on the corner of Black Eagle
Street and Grey Eagle Street, of which the
Threadneedle Street Church already held a lease.
It was then occupied by 'certain old Almeshouses'
belonging to the church, which the recipients of
the patent intended to ’pull downe to rebuild anew
upon some part of the said ground’. (ref. 35) These
almshouses, which are shown by Ogilby and Morgan in their map of 1677 on the south-east corner
of the two streets, had been given by Paul Docminicq and his wife Marie Tordreau. (ref. 36) The new
church was to be built on the northern part of the
site, fronting on Black Eagle Street, and was to
measure about eighty feet by fifty-four feet. A
plan of the church and of four of the rebuilt aims-houses is preserved in a deed of 1831. (ref. 37) The
church was known as l'Eglise de PHopital,
probably because of the almshouses, which Maitland described in 1739 as providing ’convenient
Apartments for Forty-five poor Men and Women,
who are allow'd Two Shillings and Three-pence,
and a Bushel of Coals each Weekly, and Apparel
every other Year'. (ref. 38) This implies that there
were originally more almshouses than are shown
on the plan of 1831. Those which disappeared
may have stood on the ’back part of the premises
adjoining to the … Church’, which was taken in
the middle of the eighteenth century for the northward extension of Wood Street. (ref. 21)
In 1718 a charity school was established in
connexion with the church, (ref. 39) and in 1739 it contained one hundred boys and one hundred girls. (ref. 40)
The children were taught and clothed free of
charge. (ref. 39)
In 1742 the church building was described as
’now decaying’, and the lease of the property as
’near expiring’. Instead of renewing it, the
Threadneedle Street Church obtained a licence to
build a new church and schools at the corner of
Church (now Fournier) Street and Brick Lane. (ref. 41)
When these buildings were completed in 1743,
the French congregation left Black Eagle Street
(see page 221).
On Rocque's map of 1746 the Black Eagle
Street building is shown as a Methodist chapel.
John Wesley preached there on a number of
occasions between 1750 and 1763. In 1755 he
spoke to a congregation ’to the number of about
eighteen hundred persons’. (ref. 42) In 1763 he recorded
the following experience: ’Preaching in the
evening at Spitalfields, on ’"Prepare to meet thy
God”, I largely showed the utter absurdity of the
supposition, that the world was to end that night.
But notwithstanding all I could say, many were
afraid to go to bed, and some wandered about in the
fields, being persuaded, that, if the world did not
end, at least London would be swallowed up by an
earthquake.’ (ref. 43) The Methodists apparently did
not hold the property on a long lease, for in
November 1752 it was offered to Christ Church
parish as a workhouse. (ref. 44) While this proposal was
under consideration, Nathaniel Wilkes, the owner,
changed his mind, and decided to retain the
property in order to extend Wood Street northward through part of it. (ref. 21)
The Methodists remained in Black Eagle
Street Chapel until 1819, when they moved to the
former French church in Church (Fournier) Street
(see page 223). The Black Eagle Street property
was leased by John Wilkes to Truman's brewery
in 1831, by which time the chapel had become
a warehouse. (ref. 37) It probably survived until 1895. (ref. 45)
French House of Charity and Corbet's
Court French School
Demolished
In 1739 William Maitland described the work
of a ’French-House of Charity’ in Spitalfields,
’commonly call'd the Soup’. It had been ’erected
about Forty-five Years ago, for the Relief of
necessitous Families, whose Number, in the Year
1733 amounted to Two hundred and Ninety-six’. At first the charity made gifts of money, but
these were soon replaced by portions of food, each
consisting of broth, bread and meat. (ref. 38) The
charity was mentioned again in 1746 (ref. 46) and in
1754. (ref. 47) On Rocque's map of 1746 it is located in
Corbet's Court, where Maitland mentions the
existence of a French charity school for fifty boys
and fifty girls, (ref. 40) run under the same management
as ’the Soup’. (ref. 38)
Hope Street Chapel
Hope Street now part of Wilkes Street
At some time between 1769 and 1786 a Baptist congregation met for a short period in Hope
Street, Spitalfields. (ref. 48) In 1787 an Independent
chapel was opened in Hope Street, which continued until September 1836. (ref. 49) In 1811 the
chapel is called ’Calvinist’ (ref. 50) and in 1813 'Methodist'. (ref. 37) In 1836 the chapel was apparently closed,
but it must have been re-opened almost at once by
the Rev. William Tyler. In 1844 Tyler moved
to Church Street chapel in Mile End New Town,
taking his congregation with him. (ref. 51) The chapel
is shown on a lease of 1853, but at this time it does
not appear to have been occupied by a congregation. By 1903 it had become a synagogue. (ref. 52)
The chapel was built on the land at the rear of
Nos. 93 and 95 Wilkes Street, and entrance lobbies and a stair to the gallery were formed in the
existing houses. The chapel is a plain square room
of late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century
character, lit by two round-headed windows and
with a flat ceiling in place of the former dome. (ref. 52)
The gallery, which has a panelled front, runs
round three sides, supported on cast iron columns.
The building is now used as a bakery.
Nos. 20–26 (even) Wilkes Street
Formerly Nos. 12–9 (consec.) John Street
Rate books suggest that these houses (Plate 71d)
were perhaps built about 1818. It is not known
whether they were then already leased to Truman's Brewery, by which they were held before
1842. In the mid-nineteenth century they were
Occupied by employees of the company.
Nos. 20–26 are terrace-houses containing a
cellar-basement and three storeys. The plain
fronts are built of yellow and pink bricks, except
that of No. 26 which is of plum-coloured bricks.
Each house has one window placed more or less
centrally in the ground storey and two in each
upper storey, all having segmental arches of brick,
stone sills, and plastered reveals. The sashes retain
all their glazing bars, the ground-floor windows
are furnished with external shutters, and the eight-panelled front doors are set in round-arched
openings, with plastered reveals and lunettes.
These houses are well maintained and their neat
fronts, with the woodwork painted in gay colours,
are in striking contrast with the squalid decay that
has overtaken so many of the houses nearby.
Nos. 47–85 (odd) Wilkes Street
Formerly Nos. 1–20 (consec.) Wilkes Street
Nos. 47–51 demolished
The original ground- and first-floor storeys of
these houses (Plate 71c) were built between 1753
and 1757 by John Lorrington of Bermondsey,
bricklayer (see page III). The date of the
addition of the top two storeys, of which the upper
consisted in 1897 of workshops (ref. 53) is not known,
but may have been in 1873 when twenty-one-year
repairing leases of Nos. 63–85 were granted to
R. C. Cook of Norton Folgate, builder. (ref. 54) In
1894. the whole range, being ’in a very ruinous
and dilapidated state’, was leased to Harry
Richardson of Finsbury Square, surveyor, who
undertook to spend £300 on the repair of each
house. (ref. 55) In 1897 the houses were said to be ’too
old to stand any longer’. (ref. 53)
Nos. 53–85 (odd) form the large surviving
part of the uniformly designed terrace of houses,
built in pairs with mirrored plans (fig. 29). Each
house originally consisted of a cellar-basement,two storesy, and, presumbly, a weavers’ garret in
the roof, the last being replaced by two more
storeys when the houses were reconstructed to
torm tenements. The original fronts are built of
plum-coloured bncks with red brick segments]
arches to the first-floor windows, of which each
house has two centred over the ground-floor win- dows with a blank space above the doorway. The
segmental arches of the ground-floor windows
have been concealed by cement lintels with keyblocks, and the doorways have crudely designed
surrounds of cement. Some of the original front
doors survive, with raised-and-fielded panels in
moulded framing. These doors, together with the
flush frames and heavy glazing bars in some of the
windows, suggest that the houses are older than
documentary evidence proves them to be. There
are three segmental-arched windows, with recessed sashes, in each of the added storeys.
Figure 29:
Nos. 75–77 (1753–7) and 89–91 (? c. 1770) Wilkes Street, front elevation
Nos. 87–91 (odd) Wilkes Street
Formerly Nos. 12–10 (consec.) Hope Street
The lower storeys of these houses (fig. 29) are
similar to those built by John Lorrington in
’Wilkes Street’ in the 1750's and may conceivably have been built at the same period, as a court
or cul-de-sac north of Quaker Street. (fn. c) The
northern part of the street was probably first cut
through in the 1770's and 1780's. In 1897
Nos. 87–91 were said to be ’very old and worn’
and it was anticipated that ’the state of repair
will have to be very carefully watched to enable
the houses to stand' until the expiry of a lease in
1951. (ref. 56)
Nos. 87–91 (odd), although not built in pairs,
were probably similar in their original form to
Nos. 53–85, and have one added storey replacing the original garret.
Great Eastern Buildings, Quaker Street
When the Great Eastern Railway Company
began an enlargement of Liverpool Street Station
in 1887, the number of persons displaced by the
demolition of ninety-three houses in St. Botolph's
Bishopsgate was estimated at 600 (ref. 57) for whom the
Company was required to provide alternative
accommodation by the General Powers Act of the
same year. One of the three blocks of buildings
built for this purpose was begun early in 1890 (ref. 58) at
the north-east corner of Quaker Street and Wilkes
Street. It was to contain twenty-four one-room
and sixty-eight two-room tenements, giving accommodation for 320 persons. The building was
completed by October 1890, (ref. 57) in compliance with
the agreement made with the builder, Mark
Gentry, whose tender was for £13,776. The
architect was John Wilson, engineer to the Great
Eastern Railway Company. (ref. 58)
Great Eastern Buildings consist of two long
blocks, two rooms deep and four storeys high,
placed at a right angle to Quaker Street with the
fronts facing each other across an open-ended
court. Each block is divided into three sections,
with four tenements on each floor, and all the
storeys were originally similar in arrangement.
Every group of four tenements was allotted two
water-closets and one scullery, leading off the
staircase landing.
The elevations are of yellow stocks with bands
of red brick just above the sills of the windows,
which have segmental arches of red brick. Giant
pilasters, also of red brick, are placed at each end of
the front and flank the tall openings that light and
ventilate the three staircases.