ASTOR HOUSE

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 August 1928, Page 2

ASTOR HOUSE

LONDON’S NOTABLE LANDMARK A notable London landmark —the famous Astor House on Victoria Embankment —has iiassed into the possession of the Society of Incorporated Accountants, states an English exchange. The Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada acquired the building in 1922, but are moving to their new premises in Cockspur Street. Astor House will then be known as Incorporated Accountants’ Hall. One of the most ornate buildings in London, it was built in 1894-5 by the late Lord Astor at a cost of £250,000, to the design of Sir J. L. Pearson, R.A., and is full of beautiful craftmanship. The building may indeed be described as a. casket built entirely of Portland stone. The weather vane was intended by Lord Astor to be a representation in beaten copper of the caravel in which Columbus discovered America. The staircase hall is panelled in oak, and has a chimney-piece in pavonazetto marble. The floor is of marble, jaspar, porphyry, and onyx. The staircase rises in three flights to the gallery on the first floor, and from balustrading to treads is carved in solid mahogany. Seven beautifully carved wood figures on the newel posts, representing the chief characters in Dumas’s “Three Musketeers,” were the work of J. Nicholls. He insisted upon their being kept in his bedroom before his eyes, and they were not delivered until he died. The arcading surrounding the gallery has ten pillars of solid ebony, specially imported and now irreplaceable. In what was Lord Astor’s livingroom and office, too, the walls are elaborately pannelled in irreplaceable pencil cedar, while the inside of the mahogany entrance door to the great hall has a carved head and nine decorative panels in silver gilt by the late Sir George Franpton, R.A. “It is well tliat'this unique example of British art and craft is to be preserved.” says Mr J. It. Willis Alexander, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Society of Accountants, “and by a professional society which is able to maintain the building in a manner befitting its character and design.”