Nos. 88–90 (consec.) Pall Mall
Occupied part of the site of the Royal Automobile Club
At No. 90 Coney (pocket, drawing B) shows a
fair-sized house of about 1760, with a fourstoreyed front of simple design, stucco-faced, its
only decorative feature being the Doric porch of
the centrally placed entrance, its two columns serving to support the large canted bay projecting from
the second storey. Each upper storey contained
three equally spaced windows. The volume of
'Plans of Town Houses', in Sir John Soane's
Museum, contains a survey, dated 20 February
1801, of the ground and first floors of this house,
there described as 'Lord Temple's house in Pall
Mall'. These show the simple arrangement of a
large front room and a large back room with the
staircase and an ante between them. (ref. 156) The house
was occupied by W. J. Denison, the millionaire
banker and member of Parliament, from 1815 to
his death in 1849. (ref. 71)
No. 89 was occupied for many years by members of the Wagner family, who carried on a
hatter's business there. The house was rebuilt in
1810 by Melchior Henry Wagner. (ref. 157) It was
taken over later by the Globe Insurance Company
as an office. According to The Architectural
Magazine the company's office in Pall Mall was
being 'rebuilt' in 1836: 'The front is to be in
imitation stone: and, when completed, it is expected to vie with the recent improvements' in Pall
Mall. (ref. 158) An office for the Globe Insurance is included in a list of buildings designed by Philip
Hardwick, but it is not known whether this was
in Pall Mall or in Cornhill, where the company
also had premises. (ref. 159) The ratebooks for Pall Mall
show no change in the assessment, and a comparison of the building drawn by Coney in 1814
with that photographed in 1907 (ref. 160) (Plate 204)
suggests that they were the same. Both sources
show a single house with a four-storeyed front,
three windows wide. From the ground storey
projected a shop-front, divided by columns into
three bays, a wide window flanked by doorways.
Above the entablature was an iron railing, forming
a balcony to the second storey. The upper part of
the front appears in both sources to have been of
brick, with plain rectangular windows and a single
cornice below the top, or attic storey. Coney,
however, has a plain roof whereas the photograph
shows two dormers. It is, therefore, possible that
Hardwick merely rebuilt the projecting shop-front
in a setting of artificial stone, and added a garret
storey to an existing house.
The house later numbered 88 was occupied
from 1775 to 1780 by Nathaniel Hone, the portrait painter, (ref. 71) who was a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists of Great Britain and one
of the first Royal Academicians.
All three houses were taken over by the War
Office in 1859 and demolished in 1908 to make
way for the Royal Automobile Club.