264-267 Tottenham Court Road, London
264-267 Tottenham Court Road, built in 2007-2009 to provide retail office space and residential accommodations, occupies the site of a Gothic Revival building of 1875 that had fallen into decay. It was flanked by two classical buildings of the 1920s in Portland stone with bronze windows. The London Borough of Camden was wise enough to suggest that the replacement for this Victorian Gothic building should be in harmony with these two classical neighbours. The original proposal was designed by Quinlan Terry following the first meeting, and the final scheme varied little from this. It is a nine-bay composition in Portland stone with an inventive columnar display that is flanked by a simpler bay at each end to relate politely to the existing buildings.
The building has a ground floor of rusticated arches that have the vigour of those on the ground floor of the Palazzo Corner, Venice (c. 1545), by Sansovino, who was inspired by the pattern established by Bramante in his House of Raphael, Rome (1502-10). Above this, the Terrys placed a giant Ionic order of columns rising through two stories, each filled with bronze windows. This is memorably surmounted by a similar giant Corinthian order rising through a further two stories and capped by a balustraded attic story, making seven stories in all. Each order is given a full entablature of architrave, frieze, and dentil cornice, in the manner of Palladio.
The use of successive tiers of columns framing windows goes back to the tradition established by Sansovino at the Palazzo Corner and reaches a climax at Longhena’s Ca’Rezzonico, Venice, begun in 1667. Those Venetian palaces, which take the form of large sculptural masses with almost continuous fenestration between fully articulated orders, were to inspire the American Beaux-Arts masters McKim, Mead & White, who combined giant orders with large bronze windows. Characteristic is the Buckingham Building, in Waterbury, Connecticut (1903), with rusticated arches on the top floor. Another parallel is the monumental City Hall on La Salle Street, Chicago, by Holabird and Roche of 1911.
