Description

TQ 2979 NE and 3079 NW
91/6 and 92/28

CITY OF WESTMINSTER
WHITEHALL SW1 (West side)
New Government Offices (HM Treasury) and archway link with Foreign Office at east end of King Charles Street

5.2.70

GV
II*
Government offices. 1898-1901 by John Brydon, completed with modifications in 1912 by the government architect Sir Henry Tanner. Portland stone with leaded and slate roofs A massive, quadrangular, English Baroque revival building extending through to St. James's Park with central, vast, circular courtyard (echoing the Jones-Webb Whitehall Palace scheme) entered by triple archways from side streets on same axis as the archways to Foreign Office.

Four storeys, with rusticated ground floor and mezzanine on basement and two upper storeys articulated by engaged Corinthian column order, and angle pavilions with belvedere storeys or three tier Baroque cupolas. Symmetrical facade; 17 windows wide to Whitehall, including one window angle pavilions and five-bay centrepiece with tetrastyle pedimented portico centre break; 33-window range to Parliament Square and Great George Street with angle pavilions and recessed, nine window wide, centre with tetrastyle portico over triple archway flanked by cupola-pavilions; four window extension and lower quadrant return to Park front. Semicircular arched portal to Whitehall (beneath portico) with flanking columns and pediment. Recessed glazing bar sashes in pilastered frames with alternating pediments on main second floor. Coupled columns to portico with carved pediment set against blind attic and coupled pilasters to angle pavilions surmounted by belvedere attics with inscribed, Vanbrughian, Venetian windows and coupled Ionic pilaster order. Tall entablature over mezzanine with blind balustrades to second floor windows; deep main entablature with modillion bracket cornice and balustraded parapets.

Parliament Square - Great George Street front has coupled column portico above triple archway with pediment set against attic which has oculi in flanking sections of the recessed centre; the three tier, Wren inspired cupolas, the flanking pavilions have diagonally set rusticated columns to their main stages; the long ranges between the angle pavilions are not articulated by the Corinthian order on their upper floors but have the alternating pedimented second floor windows, two of them as Venetian windows with carved festoon and "linge" enrichments to the windows above; the Corinthian order reappears in the four-window west extension.

The Park front resembles that to Whitehall but with three storey quadrant corners in place of angle pavilions; they have engaged Ionic colonnades and echo Scott's adjoining Foreign Office. At the east end of King Charles Street is a triple archway (contains passage-way link in its attic to the Foreign Office) with engaged Doric columns and large scale figure sculpture enrichment by J. R Mountfield. Balustraded parapet to basement area, extended out to Storey's Gate, to link with small stone kiosk and terminating in large corniced pier crowned by an urn. The main circular courtyard has arcaded ground floor and an engaged Corinthian order above. The interior has a large, double branching grand staircase; the reinforced concrete basement at the Park end contains the "War Rooms", Sir Winston Churchill's flat and office "bunker" during World War II.

Architectural Review; vol 24, 1908 and vol 28, 1910.

Listing NGR: TQ2995679753

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Government Offices Great George Street at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q5589008

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of Historic Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)