Adelaide House is a Grade II listed office building in London's primary financial district, the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

Location

Adelaide House is located on the north bank of the

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

, adjacent to London Bridge and St Magnus the Martyr church. It is on King William Street, and also borders the

Thames Path The Thames Path is a National Trail following the River Thames from its source near Kemble in Gloucestershire to the Woolwich foot tunnel, south east London. It is about long. A path was first proposed in 1948 but it only opened in 1996. The ...

and Thames Street.

History

In the early 1830s, the old

London Bridge Waterworks London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

on the site was demolished and replaced with the Adelaide Hotel. The building was named in honour of

King William IV William IV (William Henry; 21 August 1765 – 20 June 1837) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death in 1837. The third son of George III, William succeeded hi ...

's wife

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

, who, in 1831, had performed the opening ceremony of London Bridge. In the 1850's, the hotel was converted into offices and renamed the Adelaide Buildings. In the early 1920s, the site was acquired by

Richard Tilden Smith Richard Tilden Smith (1865 – 18 December 1929) was a British businessman who made a fortune in mining in New South Wales and Western Australia and also had significant business interests in Britain. Tilden Smith commissioned the pioneering stee ...

, who had the old Adelaide Buildings demolished to make way for a new office building. It was designed in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style by Sir John Burnet and Thomas S. Tait, with some

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

ian influences, popular at the time after the recent discovery of

Tutankhamen Tutankhamun (, egy, twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn), Egyptological pronunciation Tutankhamen () (), sometimes referred to as King Tut, was an Egyptian pharaoh who was the last of his royal family to rule during the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ruled ...

's tomb. The building features a sculpture by

William Reid Dick Sir William Reid Dick, (13 January 1878 – 1 October 1961) was a Scottish sculptor known for his innovative stylisation of form in his monument sculptures and simplicity in his portraits. He became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1921, a ...

above the main entrance, depicting a 3.2 metre high figure in draped materials carrying an orb with an astrological band. When completed in 1925, it was the City's tallest office block, at . Adelaide House was the first building in the City to employ the

steel frame Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The developm ...

technique that was later widely adopted for skyscrapers around the world, and also the first office block the United Kingdom to have central ventilation and telephone and electric connections on every floor. In addition, on opening the building featured a roof garden including an 18-hole putting course, rockeries, fruit trees and beehives. The building has been Grade II listed since 1972. It was occupied by law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP from 1970 to 2020. In 2021, planning permission was granted to refurbish the building, with work expected to start in 2022.

References

*''I Never Knew That About London'', Christopher Winn, 2007

Location

History

References

Further reading