Blog Archives

Anatomy of a House No.23: 63 Harley Street

31/7/2025

Anatomy of a House No.23

63 Harley Street
1934
Wimperis, Simpson & Guthrie

63 Harley Street

Harley Street in Marylebone is readily associated with the medical profession, an area where private doctors treat well-heeled patients in luxurious surroundings. The next house in our Anatomy of a House series sits in the middle of this street and lives up to its medical heritage. No.63 was built as the home of ophthalmologist Sir Stewart Duke-Elder and his wife, Lady Phyllis. Duke-Elder was the most prominent British ophthalmologist of the first half of the 20th century, researching eye conditions and writing a string of text books, later becoming Surgeon-Oculist to Edward VIII, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II.

Sir Stewart Duke-Elder, portrait by Ruskin Spear (1956). Image from Eye News.

He and his wife commissioned a new house not long after Stewart was knighted in 1934, to include a home and consulting rooms for both Sir Stewart and Lady Phyllis, who was an ophthalmologist herself. It was designed by the esteemed partnership of Edmund Wimperis, William B. Simpson and Leonard R. Guthrie. The partnership was formed in 1913 by Wimperis and Simpson, with Guthrie joining in 1925. The trio had previously designed the rebuilt Fortnum and Mason department store in Piccadilly (1926), Grosvenor House in Park Lane (1926) and the Cambridge Theatre in Seven Dials (1930), as well as a number of other residences in Westminster.

Grosvenor House, Park Lane (1926). Image from RIBApix.

The new home replaced a Georgian terraced house, with a four storey structure, as well as a basement and attic area. Built with a steel frame and brick, the street facing facade is finished in ashlar stone and has a pitched slate roof. The exterior balances the traditional Georgian style of the existing neighbourhood with the modernity of art deco, which was gaining gradual acceptance in Britain. The form, with its height and sets of three windows match the other residences in the street. However the finish, in austere grey stone, and lacking much in the way of detail, save the wrought iron balconies, speak to contemporary styles.

Duke-Elder's consulting room. Image from Dezeen.

The real interest of the house lies in its interiors, remarkably still largely intact today. The ground floor had a consulting room, waiting room and secretary's office for Duke-Elder's practice. The consulting room has a wall that curves around Duke-Elder’s kidney-shaped desk, lit from above by a circular light well. The consulting room is panelled in Australian walnut and has a marble fireplace, with built in bookcases and a curved window seat. The light fittings in the surgeon's work area were designed by Ralph Waldo Maitland to simulate natural lighting. Maitland also designed the lighting system at the nearby Royal Institute of Architects Building, completed at the same time at 63 Harley Street.

The ground floor staircase and wood panelling by Betty Joel. Image from UCL.

The entrance hallway on the ground floor is paneled in sycamore with walnut doors and skirting, and also features fittings by designer Betty Joel, whose art deco designs were a part of buildings like the Daily Express offices in Fleet Street and St Olaf’s House in Tooley Street. At the Harley Street house, Joel designed umbrella stands, desks, filing cabinets, bookcases and her signature “ships-grille” radiator covers. The hallway also featured a circular rug, designed by textile designer Marion Dorn. Visitors are spirited to the first floor by an elliptically-shaped, streamlined staircase, complete with brass handrails and balustrade. On this floor was the consulting room of Lady Phyllis, a library and a dining room. The library has built-in bookshelves, desks, window seats and fireside seats. On the second floor is the couples bedroom, dressing rooms, bathrooms and a breakfast room.

The waiting room area with rug by Marion Dorn.

The house was profiled in a March 1934 edition of Architecture and Building News under the title “The New Town House” and also described as "the modern manner at its best”, with photos of its luxurious interior and decorations. Duke-Elder worked at No.63 until 1963, when it was sold to ophthalmologist Sir Allen Goldsmith, with Duke Elder continuing to practice from there until 1976, two years before he passed away. The house itself was listed in October 2009, and in 2015 was restored and converted into a purely residential building by Mackenzie Wheeler Architects.

1 Comment

Flying High: Hendon Between the Wars

9/7/2025

0 Comments

Poster advertising the RAF Aerial Pageant at Hendon. Image from London Transport Museum.

Last year we wrote a blog about Edgware, and how the opening of the 1924 Northern Line station changed the area from a village into a suburb of London. Now we will move a couple of stops down the underground extension to Hendon, to see how the opening of Hendon Central in 1923 transformed the area in the years leading up to World War II, and saw modernism arrive on the outskirts of the capital. Hendon was a parish in the county of Middlesex, and steadily grew in the first decade of the 20th century, with a population of 56,013 in 1921. At this time the area became a hotbed for the nascent aviation industry, with Everett, Edgecumbe and Co building small planes at their works and aviation pioneer Claude Grahame-White establishing an aerodrome in 1908, both in Colindale.

Hendon Central tube station shortly after opening, before the flats and shopping parade was built. Image from London Transport Museum.

Hendon Central was built as part of the extension of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, later to be known as the Northern Line, as it extended into the growing suburbs. The station opened for service on 19th November 1923, serving as the terminus until the line was extended to Edgware the following year. The station and its parade of shops were designed by Stanley Heaps, chief architect to the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, owner of the new line, in a thoroughly Neo-Georgian manner, a far cry from the continental modernism that Charles Holden was to introduce at the other end of the line. The entrance has a grand portico with a colonnade of Doric columns, with the interior finished with wooden doors, white, black and green tiling and a chequerboard floor.

Hendon Odeon Cinema, now demolished. Image from Cinema Treasures.

Opposite the station, as part of another shopping parade, a symbol of the new style appearing in Britain from the continent and America appeared in 1932. This was the Ambassador Cinema, one of many art deco screens built all around the suburbs between the wars. It was designed by G.E MacLeavy of Henry F. Webb & Ash, with a curved entrance in white render and glass, with flanking buildings in more sober red brick and a pantiled auditorium, a typical mish mash of styles, both contemporary and historical, found in the suburban scene of the 1930s. Of course just one cinema was not enough for most suburban centres in the interwar years, and an Odeon opened on Church Road in 1939, the last in the country to do so before World War II broke out. Here modernity was more pronounced, with a curved brick entrance and rectangular tower, designed by Robert Bullivant of the Harry Weedon firm. Whereas the Ambassador still sits opposite the station, now as a health centre, the Odeon was demolished in 1981.

Hendon United Synagogue, designed by Cecil J Eprile.

Not far from the station is the Hendon United Synagogue, which despite its religious purpose, displays some of the same art deco design as the aforementioned cinemas. It was opened in 1935, designed by architect Cecil J. Eprile, who produced a number of synagogues in the suburbs, as well as designing buildings for the Times Furnishing Company. The Hendon synagogue has a symmetrical frontage in brick, with decorative metal framed windows and stained glass windows reused from Cricklewood synagogue. Another religious building reflecting the design of its times, is Hendon Methodist Church in The Burroughs (1937), a more expressionist-influenced building, designed by Herbert Welch and Feix Lander. It has intricate brickwork around the entrance and stained glass by Christopher Webb inside. Twenty years earlier Welch had also designed Hendon Fire Station (1913) in an Arts and Crafts fashion, in keeping with neighbouring Urban Council Offices of 1900.

Detached house on Ashley Lane, designed by Welch, Cachemaille-Day and Lander. Image from RIBApix.

Welch would also be involved in the area's biggest collection of modernist architecture, the houses for Haymills builders along Ashley Lane and Sherwood Road, built part of the Hancock estate on part of the grounds of Hendon Hall from 1933. The houses are similar to those that Welch, with partners Felix Lander and N.F. Cachemaille-Day, designed for Haymills at Hanger Hill and Wembley, two storey homes in brick with flat roofs and tiled parapets, modern but not overtly modernist. Many of these houses have now been extended with added floors, doric columns or white render added. The most spectacular house they designed in this area was across the other side of the Great North Way, but still on Ashley Lane. No,54 or Everest as it was called, was a grand art deco style house, built for Mr & Mrs Leslie MacMichael, with a central staircase tower and roof deck with metal railings, giving it the air of an airport control tower. Unfortunately the house was demolished and replaced by what is now Woodtree Close. Another modernist loss was 11 Talbot Crescent, a stern looking flat roofed house in brick by Harold Alexander, demolished in the 1990s.

Everest, Ashley Lane, designed by Welch, Cachemaille-Day and Lander. Image from RIBApix.

Back down the other end of Ashley Lane, at No.5, is a lovely deco style house with a green pan tiled roof, white rendered walls and recessed entrance, designed by Bernard Engle, just before World War II. The most spectacular house in the area can be found two streets over in Downage, appropriately called the White House, one of architect Evelyn Simmons’ Sunway type house designs for the 1934 Ideal Home Exhibition. The house was designed to be built in any location, but its square staircase tower, bright white render and curved bays did not find favour with the buying public and only a handful were ever built. As well as houses, a number of apartment blocks were built such as Burnham Court in Brent Street, Quadrant Close in The Burroughs and Hendon Park Mansions in Queens Road, none with any great modernist conviction, but with enough moderne features to attract younger buyers looking for a new life in the suburbs.

Proposed Aerodrome and Landing Strip, Hendon (1930) by Marshall, Tweedy, Bernard and Partners. Image from RIBApix.

Also worth mentioning is Hendon Greyhound Stadium, opened in 1935 with its art deco style square entrance tower which was lit up at night. The stadium operated up until 1972, when it closed and demolished to make way for what would become Brent Cross shopping centre. One building that didn't appear but is worth placing here, is a proposal for an extended aerodrome from 1930 by Marshall, Tweedy, Bernard and Partners. Judging by the drawing, the aerodrome building would have been a couple of miles long, with the landing strip situated on the roof and the terminal buildings integrated into the structure.

By the outbreak of world war II in 1939, Hendon had gone through some profound changes. Its population had tripled, it had become an Urban District in 1932, and along with the arrival of the underground in 1923, the area had also hemmed in by the opening of various arterial roads. As we have seen, modernism had also arrived in this suburb, not through the provision of the state or dogmatic architects but via the speculative builder, cinema chains and religious organisations. In the post war era more modernist buildings would arrive, some courtesy of the local authority, such as new housing estates, and some by more commercial interests like the speculative Hendon Hall Court apartments by the Owen Luder Partnership (1966) and the brutalist Car Showroom on the M1. But the years between the wars was the period when Hendon grew into itself, and became a modernist suburb.

If you like this, you can buy me a Coffee here!

0 Comments

Anatomy of a House No.23: 63 Harley Street

Anatomy of a House No.23 63 Harley Street 1934 Wimperis, Simpson & Guthrie

Flying High: Hendon Between the Wars

Archives

Categories

Anatomy of a House No.23

63 Harley Street
1934
Wimperis, Simpson & Guthrie