101 Harley Street, City of Westminster, London

Summary

A house, most probably designed and built to include medical consulting rooms of 1901-1904 by William Henry White, and later converted to now be consulting rooms throughout with a top flat.

Description

A house, most probably designed and built to include medical consulting rooms of 1901-1904 by William Henry White, and later converted to now be consulting rooms throughout with a top flat.

MATERIALS & PLAN: red brick laid in English bond with lavish Portland stone dressings. The building is of four floors with basement and attic and connects through to a mews house at the rear which forms part of Devonshire Mews South.

EXTERIOR: the street front has a wide bow window to the right which rises from the ground to include three floors, with three sash windows to each level. The stone surround has recessed circular and diamond-shaped panels. Immediately to its left at ground-floor level is the entrance with a deep, arched stone porch, supported by richly carved brackets. The porch soffit is panelled and the door is half-glazed with a metal screen. Upper windows on the left side have aedicular surrounds. There are quoins to the corners and a deep cornice projects above the second floor supporting a balustrade above the bow and a balcony to its left. The third-floor windows have prominent triple keystones and alternating triangular and segmental hoods. The attic storey has two, paired gables with tall, shaped heads of stone. Area railings are of decorative ironwork with S-scrolls, and there is similar ironwork to window box guards at first and third floor levels.

The rear has a projecting wing at right and there is an angled wall in the re-entrant angle between this and the main house which has a mansard roof. A top-lit room is placed in the rear yard and the front of the mews house to Devonshire Mews South has painted walling and two garage doors at ground-floor level with a pedestrian door between them and three bays of windows with cambered heads to the first floor and flat-roofed dormers to the attic. The central, first-floor window was formerly a taking-in door.

INTERIOR: the style of the principal interiors is an Edwardian interpretation of late-C18 Neo-Classicism. The lobby and the entrance hall are divided by a glazed screen which includes a broken pediment above the double doors which connect the two spaces. Flooring is of stone slabs with black marble diamonds to the corners. The ground floor front room, which appears to have been a dining room originally, has Ionic pilasters to the walls and rounded corners at its western end with curved mahogany doors at either side of a widely-arched central recess, for a sideboard. The fire surround is of carved mahogany with marble slips and green tiles and a moulded copper panel above the hearth. The top-lit room to the rear, which was perhaps always intended as a consulting room, has panelling to the lower walls which ends at the level of the door heads, and an egg-and-dart cornice. The staircase has square newels with circular finials and vase balusters and is lit by an oval skylight with a web pattern and stained glass panels.

The first floor front room has rich plasterwork and panelling to the ceiling and walls with classical figures including amorini and classical maidens in panels above the doors and fireplace. The ceiling has paterae, swags, shields and rinceau ornament arranged in an Adamesque pattern.

Doors on the ground, first and second floors are typically of five panels and of mahogany to the ground and first floors. Staircases to the top floor and basement levels have been renewed.

History

The present building was erected in 1901-1904 to the designs of William Henry White as a house for Doctor Arthur Francis Voelcker on the site of a previous Georgian building. Harley Street had been laid out in the 1720s, but not built up until after 1752 by a series of speculative builders. Harley Street’s position as the pre-eminent address for medical practitioners was established gradually. In the early C19 the street was noted as home to lawyers and Members of Parliament, but by 1875 its position as a medical centre had become settled. Doctors no longer always visited their patients in their homes and instead the sick would come to them and this caused an adaptation to many of the houses, with waiting and consulting rooms placed on the ground floor and family accommodation above. Several of the Georgian houses in the street were rebuilt in the late C19 and early C20 and WH White was one of the architects favoured by the Howard de Walden Estate, which owns the land. White's client, Dr Voelcker, held posts at University College Hospital and Great Ormond Street as well as teaching at the Middlesex Hospital and St Luke's. The census of 1911 shows he and his wife living in the house with six children and five servants. In common with many houses in Harley Street, number 101 was converted in the later C20 to house medical consulting rooms across the ground, first and second floors and continues as such. The top two floors are now a separate flat and two basement rooms have been changed to accommodate operating theatres.

Reasons for Listing

Number 101 Harley Street, London is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* a carefully designed and stylish city house in an Edwardian free-Renaissance style which has retained a high degree of its original appearance.

Historic interest:
* as a well-preserved example of the house of a professional man which shows the gradual evolution of family homes to include consulting rooms at this date in this part of London.

Group value:
* with the many statutorily listed buildings which line Harley Street.

External Links

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