| Imperial Hotel | |
|---|---|
 Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, 2017 | |
  Location within Central London | |
| Hotel chain | Imperial London Hotels |
| General information | |
| Address | 61-66 Russell Square |
| Town or city | London, WC1B 5BB |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 51°31′18″N0°07′27″W / 51.5218°N 0.1241°W |
| Website | |
| www | |
The Imperial Hotel is a hotel on the east side of Russell Square, a branch of Imperial London Hotels. [1] - a chain of budget tourist hotels with several properties in the Bloomsbury area.
The original building was designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll and built between 1905 and 1907. The height of the building was 61 meters and there were 15 floors. [2] In its opening year 1907 it was used by the first all Indian cricket team to tour England. [3]
Physicist Leo Szilard was staying at the Imperial Hotel when he conceived of the atomic bomb. [4]
Round about 1910 an extension to the hotel took place and construction was completed in 1913. [5] As part of the extension, Victorian-style Turkish baths were constructed. [6] [7] The hotel had about 640 bedrooms. [8] The building was equally colossal as its neighbour the Kimpton Fitzroy London Hotel and the architectural style was a mixture of Art Nouveau Tudor and Art Nouveau Gothic, combining terra-cotta ornaments in which the corbels, gargoyles and statues were modelled with red brick. Towers rose above a high mansard roof of green copper. A Winter Garden occupied the ground floor between the two bedroom wings. Both Winter garden and Turkish baths were decorated in glazed Doulton ware. [9]
The building was demolished at the beginning of 1967. [2] [10] It was demolished because of its lack of bathrooms and because, according to the Greater London Council, the whole frame of the building was structurally unsound. There was no possibility of saving it if a preservation order had been placed on the building. In truth, however, the building was probably a victim of fashion and the prevailing taste in the 1960s. [11] All that remains of the building are 21 statues from the Turkish baths, bells and a galleon, now placed in the courtyard of the current hotel. [12]
The hotel was replaced by a new building of the same name. [13]
Blackwall is an area of Poplar, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, East London. The neighbourhood includes Leamouth and the Coldharbour conservation area.
Russell Square is a large garden square in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden, built predominantly by the firm of James Burton. It is near the University of London's main buildings and the British Museum. Almost exactly square, to the north is Woburn Place and to the south-east is Southampton Row. Russell Square tube station sits to the north-east.
Tavistock Square is a public square in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden near Euston Station.
West Brompton is a station located on Old Brompton Road (A3218) in West Brompton, West London for London Underground, London Overground and National Rail services. It is immediately south of the demolished Earls Court Exhibition Centre and west of Brompton Cemetery in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Queen Square is a garden square in the Bloomsbury district of central London. Many of its buildings are associated with medicine, particularly neurology.
The Birkdale Palace Hotel was a luxury hotel located in the Lancashire coastal resort of Birkdale, Southport, on the north-west coast of England. The building towered over the surrounding area for over a hundred years before being demolished in 1969. During the Second World War it had been used as a rehabilitation centre for US airmen, and in the last two years of existence was used as a film location. The Palace is notorious in local folklore as a haunted hotel.
The Birmingham Baths Committee was an organisation responsible for the provision and maintenance of public swimming and bathing facilities. Birmingham City Council funded, constructed and ran bathing facilities throughout the city. The movement to develop baths and wash houses in Britain had its impetus with the rapid urbanisation of the Industrial Revolution, which was felt acutely in Birmingham, one of England's powerhouses.
The original Medina House in Hove, Sussex, was the eastern of two seafront buildings, located on either side of Sussex Road, which together comprised Hove Baths, later to become more popularly known as the Medina Baths. The western building housed the men's baths, and the eastern building housed the women's baths.
The Royal Pump Rooms is a cultural centre on the Parade in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. It was the most famous of several spa baths opened in Leamington between the late-18th and mid-19th centuries. People would travel from throughout the country, and indeed Europe, to benefit from treatments using the town's healing waters. When 'taking the waters' became less fashionable after the mid-19th century the Pump Rooms became Leamington's only surviving spa facility, later also being extended to include the town's public swimming pool. After a major redevelopment in 1997-99 the building now houses Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, a public library, a Tourist Information Centre, cafe and assembly rooms. It is a Grade II listed building.
The architecture of Manchester demonstrates a rich variety of architectural styles. The city is a product of the Industrial Revolution and is known as the first modern, industrial city. Manchester is noted for its warehouses, railway viaducts, cotton mills and canals – remnants of its past when the city produced and traded goods. Manchester has minimal Georgian or medieval architecture to speak of and consequently has a vast array of 19th and early 20th-century architecture styles; examples include Palazzo, Neo-Gothic, Venetian Gothic, Edwardian baroque, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and the Neo-Classical.
Watts Warehouse is a large, ornate Victorian Grade II* listed building standing on Portland Street in the centre of Manchester, England. It opened in 1856 as a textile warehouse for the wholesale drapery business of S & J Watts, and was the largest single-occupancy textile warehouse in Manchester. Today the building is part of the Britannia Hotels chain.
Edwardian architecture usually means a Neo-Baroque architectural style that was popular for public buildings in the British Empire during the Edwardian era (1901–1910). Architecture up to 1914 is commonly included in this style.
The Kimpton Fitzroy London is a historic five-star hotel, located on Russell Square, Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. From its opening in 1900 until 2018, it was known as the Hotel Russell.
Henry Currey (1820–1900) was an English architect and surveyor.
Charles Fitzroy Doll JP, FRIBA (1850–1929), was an English architect of the Victorian and Edwardian eras who specialised in designing hotels. He also designed the dining room on the RMS Titanic, which was based on his design for that in the Hotel Russell in Bloomsbury.
Henry Charles Fehr FRBS was a British monumental and architectural sculptor active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He produced several notable public sculptures, war memorials and works for civic buildings. These included architectural sculptures for Middlesex Guildhall, for Wakefield County Hall and for Cardiff City Hall. Throughout the 1920s, Fehr created a number of war memorials, often featuring detailed bronze statuary, for British towns and cities. Notable examples of Fehr's war memorials include those at Leeds, Colchester, Keighley and at Burton upon Trent.
The Granville Hotel, Ramsgate, Kent, on the southeast coast of England, was a former hotel designed by Edward Welby Pugin, son of Augustus Pugin. The Granville was a hotel between 1869 and 1946 before being sold by proprietors Spiers & Pond.
Horatio Nelson Goulty was an English architect. He designed several buildings in Brighton and was an important figure in the town's public affairs in the early Victorian era.
The Walsingham House or Walsingham House Hotel was located at 150-4 Piccadilly on the site of what is now The Ritz Hotel, London and was adjacent to the Bath Hotel. The Ritz's financial backers began negotiations in 1901 and purchased the Walsingham simultaneously with the Bath Hotel. Though the Walsingham was of fairly new construction, they determined it was too "inelegant" and demolished the building. One of the considerations that made the transaction appealing to the city was that they would be able to widen Piccadilly when the Walsingham and Bath Hotels were demolished.
The Victorian Turkish bath is a type of bath in which the bather sweats freely in hot dry air, is then washed, often massaged, and has a cold wash or shower. It can also mean, especially when used in the plural, an establishment where such a bath is available.
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