No. 37 Soho Square
What is known of the early history of this
house is described above with that of Nos. 33–34.
Sir John Brownlow, third baronet, was living
here in 1691. Other occupants have included
Sir John Newton, third baronet, 1692–1733;
Lady Newton, his widow, 1734–7, and General
Charles Howard, 1745–8. The ratebooks indicate that the house was rebuilt in 1766. Later
inhabitants included the Swedish envoy, 1772–
1783; John Trotter, military storekeeper, 1795
(also at Nos. 4–6), and Messrs. Dulau and Company, foreign booksellers, 1800–1918. (ref. 33)
In the early years of the nineteenth century,
part of the house was used for public entertainments and was known as Dulau's Rooms. In
1803 and 1804 a Mr. Lenoir gave a series of
French readings here and a Mr. Fitzjames appeared as a ventriloquist. (ref. 325)
This house has been much altered but there is
considerable evidence of the rebuilding supposed
to have taken place in 1766, which was of some
quality. There are four main storeys and another
in a mansard roof. The front to the square (Plate
93c) is three windows wide and the long return to
Carlisle Street has two windows on either side of
a canted central bay, rising the full height of the
building; there is a modern extension beyond. The
brickwork is now reddened and the windows
have been given stucco architraves, the long
front having brick bands at first- and second-floor
levels and also below the plain parapet to the roof.
Only the second-floor band is now visible on the
elevation to the square, which was more elaborately dressed with stucco in the mid nineteenth
century, the large principal cornice being crowned
by a heavy balustrade. An incomplete but fine
early nineteenth-century shop front survives here,
with four engaged Greek Doric columns supporting an entablature from which all but the end
triglyphs have been removed (fig. 30). The
three windows are modern and there was formerly
a central entrance with a semi-circular light over it.
The present entrance doorway in Carlisle
Street, to the west of the projecting bay, appears
to be modem and may not be in the original
position.
Figure 30:
No. 37 Soho Square, elevation of shop front
The plan is now confused by alteration but
there is a large room facing the square on the
two main floors, a small room at the side with the
bay window and, on the first floor, a very small
room above the entrance. The staircase is at the
back of the entrance hall against the party wall and
is of some distinction, being of stone with a
wrought-iron balustrade of S-scrolls (Plate 127a,
fig. 31). It rises as far as the first floor, and is
continued above in wood. On the ground floor,
the large room to the square has an enriched
dentil cornice and an incomplete mid eighteenth-century chimneypiece of wood with Siena
and white marble slips, a carved architrave and
drops to the side margins. The side room retains
a little carved joinery. The main room on the
first floor retains a fine though incomplete Rococo
plaster ceiling with a large shaped enclosure much
embellished and various arabesque and festoon
ornaments (Plate 130a). There is also a fine
modillion cornice but no other eighteenth-century
fittings in the room, the door and window architraves being of early nineteenth-century date
with reeded mouldings and lion-mask stops. In
1928, however, Hanslip Fletcher sketched the
room, showing that the walls were finished with
tall panels, wide and narrow, ranged above a
plain pedestal-dado (Plate 96b). The window
reveals were then fitted with panelled shutters,
the mouldings enriched with carving. Reeded and
stopped architraves again occur in the much altered side room, where there is a plainly moulded
eighteenth-century cornice. One doorcase of
interest remains on the first-floor landing; it has
plain mouldings, a pulvinated frieze and a cornice supported on lightly carved brackets. The
second floor is not of interest.
Figure 31:
No. 37 Soho Square, staircase balustrade