Pall Mall, South Side, Existing Buildings: Nos 69-70 Pall Mall

Nos. 69–70 Pall Mall

Previous history of this site is described on pages 379–81

Nos. 69 and 70 Pall Mall were rebuilt for the London Joint City and Midland Bank between 1922 and 1927. The bank had originally intended to rebuild No. 70 as an addition to No. 69 which they already occupied, but this was later found to be impracticable, and permission was obtained for the redevelopment of the whole site. Demolition was begun in the spring of 1922, and was to be carried out in three stages so that business could be continued on the site. The architect was Thomas B. Whinney (later of Whinney, Son and Austen Hall). The building seems to have been finished in carcase by June 1927.

The whole of the ground floor is occupied by the bank. The two floors above were designed to serve as offices, while the three top floors were divided vertically into two maisonettes. (fn. 1) The building suffered superficial damage from enemy action in 1944.

The pompous stone front is composed of a four-bay centre, recessed between narrow slightly projecting wings. The centre is dressed with fluted Corinthian columns, rising through three storeys and set above a high rusticated arcade containing the ground-storey windows. In the ground storey of each wing is a single roundarched doorway, and in the rusticated face above are three windows, the lower two linked by an architectural framing, this treatment being echoed in the four recessed bays of the centre. The front is finished with a deep entablature, above which range two tiers of pedimented dormers in the steeply pitched roof.