Monday 3 January 2011

Gordon Mansions, Torrington Place WC1

Gordon Mansions is just the sort of overpoweringly ugly mansion block that got late-Victorian 'Queen Anne' architecture a bad name. The bay windows, the tourelles at the corner and the volutes on the pediment on the skyline all fail to conceal the elephantine dimensions.
But the doorways are pretty. Arts and Crafts arches decorated with pairs of cherubic, mop-headed charyatids that would now be illegal under the Architecture That Makes A Statement For Our Time Act, 1948.

1 comment:

The Devoted Classicist said...

I presume this door surround is painted white to make it even more prominent and that it was sandstone color like the other trim originally?