Description

CITY OF WESTMINSTER STRAND WC2
TQ 3080 NW
72/118 No 429 (Zimbabwe House,
formerly listed as
5.2.70 Rhodesia House)
GV II*
High Commission offices. 1906-08 by Charles Holden as partner in Adams and Holden,
for the British Medical Association and originally with letting shops on the ground
floor. Grey Cornish granite and Portland stone cladding steel frame, slate roof.
Exceptional neo-Mannerist design with classical motifs and forms deployed with the
freedom allowed by the stone cladding of the structural frame. Corner block. 5
storeys and dormered mansard, the top 2 storeys in Portland stone slightly recessed.
2 windows to Strand, canted corner and 7-window return to Agar Street. Main entrance
in centre of Agar Street front with isolated architrave and inset Doric columns;
the doorway and the ground and 1st floor windows are contained in sharply cut semi-
circular arched recesses between broad pilaster-piers - transomed ground floor display
windows and on 1st floor a tripartite variant on Venetian or thermal window with
small plane glazing and slender Doric columns; the pilaster piers rise through
breaks in block cornice to flank complex, planar, tripartite 2nd floor composition
of niches and windows, the niches containing the contentious and subsequently
mutilated standing figures sculpted by Jacob Epstein. The pilaster theme is continued
in the Portland stone of 3rd floor but in shallower relief and more fragmentary form
whilst with the recession of the 4th floor they become buttress-piers, 2 of them
developed as chimney stacks. The entrance bay is slightly emphasised by the doubling
up of the pilaster theme. Horizontal stratification emphasised by block cornices and
sill cornices.
Edwardian Architecture and its Origins; Alistair Service, editor.
London 1900: Alistair Service
Architectural Design; Vol; 48, Nos. 5-6; Gavin Stamp

Listing NGR: TQ3028080640

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Embassy of Zimbabwe, London at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q5369920

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.

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