Hotel Russell, now called the Kimpton Fitzroy London, was designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll (1850-1929), surveyor of the Bedford Estate, and built 1892-98. It stands at 1-8 Russell Square, London. Left: Russell Square-Guilford Street corner. Right: Center of principal façade facing Russell Square with terracotta statues of four queens and columns decorated with putti, both surmounted with knights flanking floral decoration above (1898). See linked images in Related Material below. [Click on all the images for larger pictures.]
The hotel, which is a Grade II* listed building, is of red brick with terracotta dressings, while its roofs and turrets have striking green fishscale tiles. The tall and typically Victorian tall chimney-stacks have horizontal brick and terracotta bands. According to its listing text, from which these details are taken, it originally had a central copper dome and lantern instead of its present tiled mansard roof, so it must have looked even more prominent once. The style is described in the listing text as "flamboyant French Renaissance ... derived from engravings of the Chateau de Madrid, with elaborate decorations." Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner rightly call it "monumental" (55).
Left: Side facing Bernard Street, which leads to the Russell Square tube station. Middle: Main façade showing balcony. Right: Detail of roofpeak, which clear follows the Pont Street Dutch style of Norman Shaw and his followers.
Left: Rear of the hotel in a very plain, undecorated style. Right: Conical tower roofs above main entrance.
Three examples of the hotel's stylistic eclecticism: a Italianate tower, Dutch revival roofline, and Renaissance entrance.
An edifice like this, based on a French castle, no less, was designed to impress. It bore all the hallmarks of privilege and prestige. As a new kind of building, functioning to host people from around the country and even from around the globe, the grand hotel was intended to the suggest the cultural riches of the surrounding capital — and also to suggest that every luxury awaited its guests within. Whatever assignations and indulgences might take place in the privacy of its rooms, the exterior presented an appearance of almost regal elegance and respectability.
Links to Related Material
- Henry C. Fehr's four busts of Benjamin Disraeli and others
- Fehr's statues of the four queens: Elizabeth I, Mary, Anne, and Victoria
- Other architectural sculpture here by Fehr
- Fehr's cast iron lamposts
- From Clubdom to Ritzonia: A Review of Barbara Black's Hotel London: How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories (by Diane Greco Josefowicz)
Photographs and captions by Robert Freidus. Commentary, formatting and perspective correction by George P. Landow and Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Chateau de Madrid, Paris, engraved by Silvestre Israël, from the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Louvre (L 294 LR/83 Recto), permalink: https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl020608554
Cherry, Bridget and Nikolaus Pevsner. London 4: North. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
"Russell Hotel and Attached Railings with Piers and Lamps." British Listed Buildings. Web. 26 February 2025.
Created 18 July 2001
Last modified 26 February 2025