Chrb-houses have already been mentioned in connection with the Renaissance structures in Pall Mall (p. 307). Clubs, social, political, •educational, and sporting, are far more important, and enter more deeply into the life of the people, in England than in the United States, and it is therefore not surprising that club-houses attain architectural import ance. Every town has its Conservative and Liberal clubs, whose houses are often among the finest buildings of the place. In London may be cited the National Liberal Club, by Waterhouse, with its fine and pecu liar tower, the Grand Conservative Club, on Northumberland Avenue, and the City Liberal Club, Walbrook, a quietly-designed Renaissance structure in rich materials, with no trace of the orders except pilasters as mullions between the windows.
The Birmingham Liberal Club is a favorable specimen of the applica tion of the Gothic style to modern requirements. The lower floor has a tier of pointed arches, the windows of the second or principal floor are geometric, while the upper storeys have trefoil and square heads. Hori zontal lines predominate, yet the detail is entirely Gothic. The angle of the two fronts is carried up into a low tower, the upper part of which bears four angle-turrets separated by a balustrade which partly masks a range of trefoil-headed windows.
Charitable almshouses, workhouses or poor houses, and asylums are numerous throughout the British Islands. Many of them are rich institutions, and others are erected by wealthy districts or towns; and thus, although the greater part of the older buildings have little merit, those erected during recent years often attain architectural importance.
St. Thomas finest of the London hospitals is St. Thomas's, on the Southern Embankment of the Thames, opened in 1877. It consists of eight large blocks built of brick with stone dressings con nected by corridors, and may be reckoned one of the most beautiful of the Renaissance buildings erected previous to the invention of the Queen Anne style. It forms a fine contrast to the Houses of Parliament, which front it upon the opposite side of the river. St. Peter's Hospital, in Covent Garden, is a Queen Anne structure, and Batley Cottage Hospital may be cited as a pleasing specimen of Free Classic, regular and symmet rical in all its parts, and with tiers of mullioned windows surmounted by equilateral gables.
London Street the last three decades street improvements have been effected in London upon a scale little less im portant than in Paris. Not only has the north side of the Thames been
confined, from Blackfriars to Westminster Bridge, by the broad and hand some quay known as the Thames Embankment, but a portion of the south side, west of Westminster Bridge, has been similarly improved, and two grand avenues, Queen Victoria Street in the city proper, and Northum berland Avenue, have been cut through to the Embankment from the main thoroughfares nearest to them. All these streets and quays are now lined with fine buildings. The Queen Anne offices of the London School Board, the new library of the Temple, and the extensive pile of St. Thomas's Hospital are upon the Embankment, along with many other structures of less note, and the whole line will ere long present a highly architectural aspect strongly contrasting with the river-fronts of New York and Philadelphia.
Ho/born Yaduct.—Another great improvement is the Holborn Viaduct, which, bridging a valley that for ages has been a serious impediment to traffic, necessitated the rebuilding upon a grand scale of the houses along its line, as well as the construction of the arches of the viaduct itself. Other new streets are Victoria, Westminster (now lined with " residential suites "), Cannon, City (a mass of business buildings), and Shaftesbury Avenue, recently cut from Holborn to Piccadilly.
Commercial Buildings.—Office-buildings have not in England attained the prominence they have in America. The elevator—that indispensable adjunct of loftiness—has not even in London made its way into popular favor as a means of reaching the upper floors, and thus buildings occupied by banks and offices seldom exceed five storeys in height. As an example of a London street-building the St. James branch offices of the Alliance Assurance may be mentioned. These are Oueen Anne, closely approach ing Flemish Renaissance. The windows are large and mullioned, carved panels fill the spaces between them, two broad arches constitute each front upon the ground floor, and a turret at the angle forms an oriel in its lower part and merges by corbelling into the ground-floor. Finsbury Chambers is another metropolitan example of Queen Anne.
In the vicinity of the Bank of England, London, is a mass of ambi tious and costly structures in the facades of which stone plays a leading part, and among which much beauty may be found. Various phases of Renaissance take the lead, but Gothic of Italian and Victorian affinities is by no means wanting.