Photograph by Anthony O'Neil, originally posted on the Geograph website and kindly made available on the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) licence. Many thanks. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Stafford Hotel, St James's Place. Two houses originally stood on this site: Nos 16 and 17 St James's Place, in the heart of London's clubland. In fact No. 17 had hosted various clubs in turn, the last being the Stafford Club, founded there in 1886. But both houses were demolished in 1899. Unusually, the buildings that replaced them were designed as well as undertaken by the major building contractor Henry Lovatt (1831-1913) from Wolverhampton. Having trained and worked as an architect early in his career, Lovatt "appears to have been allowed to provide his own designs, subject to the approval and supervision of the freeholder's architect, H. H. Collins of Old Broad Street. The building agreement was concluded in September 1899" ("St James's Place"). Lovatt took the lease himself. In 1902 the houses were joined to make one building, and in 1912, a year after Lovatt's death, this was taken over by Simon Harwath, and became the luxury Stafford Hotel (Weinreb et al. 863).
Bibliography
"St. James's Place." Survey of London: Volumes 29 and 30, St James Westminster, Part 1. Ed. F. H. W. Sheppard. London: London County Council, 1960: 511-541. British History Online. Web. 5 November 2021.
Weinreb, Ben, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay and John Keay, eds. The London Encyclopaedia. 3rd edition. London: Macmillan, 2008.
Created 6 November 2021