PITFIELD STREET N1 1. . 5013 (East Side) ------------------ Passmore Edwards Free Library TQ 3382 35/474 II
2. 1897-9 by H T Hare in modified Renaissance style. Red brick with terracotta dressings. 2 main storeys, basement and tall double attic storey. Left bay is a tower with pyramidal roof and round staircase turret corbelled out at 1st floor. Drum, bell-stage and cupola above, Wide window with column mullions in upper storey; small windows in baroque surrounds elsewhere, On ground floor round arched entrance with wrought iron gates, At right 8 windows on lower floors mullioned and transomed in eared architraves with frieze and cornice. Brick aprons below. Attic storey has 2 wide gables, each with a wide bow window, with column mullions and entablature, sunk into the wall; and a small window high above. Flanking these, roof descends to eaves level, with dormers.
Corner view of Scotland yard by Riochard Norman Shaw, b & w, with similar round corner turret 'tourelle'.
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Metropolitan Police old headquarters. 1887-90 by Richard Norman Shaw with John Dixon Butler. Red brick and Portland stone banding and dressings above granite podium, slate roofs. Flemish and English Baroque details, marking Shaw's transition to his grand manner with a "defensive" note added by the corner tourelles, the granite podium and four-square massing around central court.
Four storeys, basement and three tiers of dormers in steep roof. Nine bay wide elevation plus corner tourelles. Entrance by south east corner of south front with large semicircular arched portal in Baroque rusticated surround with engaged rusticated columns and large broken segmental pediment. Plain square headed mullioned-transomed recessed casements to podium. Second and third floors have architraved mullioned-transomed small pane casements with cornices on first floor and segmental arched with keystones on second floor, the second floor windows to Embankment with segmental pediments. The tourelles are deeply corbelled as bartizans with finialed cupola domed roofs. Deep corbelled eaves cornice. The north and south fronts are flanked by attic storeys surmounted by distinctive large gables elaborated with broken segmental pediment aedicules and obelisk finials.
The Embankment front has blind single storey wings projecting from ground floor and linked by tall cast iron railings screening forecourt. Attached to Embankment elevation is a portrait roundel bronze of Shaw by Hamo Thornycroft. Richard Norman Shaw; Andrew Saint
Start the week with a building. HT Hare, Passmore Edwards Library, Hoxton, 1897-99, brick & terracotta, must have been an impressive new statement in its neighbourhood. Likely some awareness of Richard Norman Shaw's New Scotland Yard, 1887-90. Listings in alt text #Victorian #ArchitecturalHistory