Lansdown House

Lansdowne House
Middlesex
The Lansdowne Club
Location
Grid reference:	TQ28828045
Location:	51°30’30"N, 0°8’42"W
History
	Built 1762 – 1768
For:	The 3rd Earl of Bute/ The 2nd Earl of Shelburne by Robert Adam
	Neo-classical
Information
Website:	lansdowneclub.com

Lansdowne House now 9 Fitzmaurice Place is the remaining part of a building to the south of Berkeley Square in central London, in Middlesex.

The building is now on the west side of Fitzmaurice Place, the area having been built up and new streets driven through since the Georgian Age: Fitzmaurice Place now runs directly before the door, but once this was part of a large, formal garden in front of the house and south of Berkeley Square, the bulk of which is now a modern building which has also named itself 'Lansdowne House', at 57 Berkeley Square.

The name of the house for two decades was 'Shelb(o)urne House', from the title of the Earls of Shelburne who owned it. The name changed when the Earl received the title 'Marquess of Lansdowne' in 1784. It was frequently let, as a whole, to families of very high wealth or income. Some of its 18th-century interiors, among the best in London, were taken elsewhere. It was occupied by three British prime ministers, by William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor, widely believed to be the richest man in America at the time of his tenancy (1891–1893), and by Harry Gordon Selfridge in the 1920s. The owning family sold the property in 1929, two years after the death of the 5th Marquess, a prominent cabinet minister.

The local authority had built an approach road in 1931 which saw the loss of approximately half of the rooms of its greater wing; it is today one of two buildings which open onto Fitzmaurice Place but is known as 9 Fitzmaurice Place. The surviving extent of the building is a Grade II* listed building status in 1970.

Current use

The building today houses the Lansdowne Club in Mayfair. It co-serves as an address of Fitzmaurice House Ltd, the International Wine and Food Society which may meet here and The Junior League of London.

History

The house before its eastern front rooms were demolished

The house was designed by Robert Adam as a house for John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who became Prime Minister in 1762. However in 1763, one year into its building, Bute left office and sold the house to William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne (who was later to become another one-year Prime Minister, in 1782 – 1783). The house was finished in 1768. Adam commissioned the local sculptor Thomas Carter the Younger to carve the chimney-pieces of his design. Shelburne retained Adam until 1771, when his wife died, with parts of the decoration still incomplete. George Dance the Younger (in the 1790s of George III's reign) and Robert Smirke (at the end of his associated Regency) worked on the house.

From 1763 to 1929, the house belonged to the senior branch of the Petty-FitzMaurice family, elevated from 1784 to a high peerage, as Marquesses of Lansdowne. In 1931, the house had extension built to the south-west, as half of its greater original wing, the east wing, was demolished to allow Fitzmaurice Place to be built. Since 1935, the residue accommodates the Lansdowne Club.

The front private garden exceeded its building's footprint but was subject to restrictive covenants. Its main front lay further forward and was a garden front to this green expanse (between Berkeley Square and Devonshire House's gardens). This conservation guaranteed for Devonshire House on Piccadilly open aspects (greenery-covered land save for discreet fences/railings) up to and including all of Berkeley Square.

Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square and Devonshire House on a map of 1895

A plan of the main floor (1765)

Famous residents

Owner, resident:-

• William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne (later 1st Marquess of Lansdowne), British prime minister (1782–83)

Tenants:-

• John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, British prime minister (1762–63)
• William Pitt the Younger, British prime minister (1783–1801, 1804–1806)
• William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor, widely believed to be the richest man in America at the time (1891–1893)
• Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, was a British Liberal statesman and Prime Minister (1894–1895)
• Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of the Selfridges department store

Partial demolition and dispersal of name

In the 1930s, the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster Council decided to build a road from Berkeley Square to Curzon Street, which required the demolition of all the garden front rooms of Lansdowne House. One of Adam's three drawing rooms was removed and installed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while the Dining Room went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The façade was rebuilt in a modified form at the front of the reduced house; about half of the north-west corner has also been lost.

On 1 May 1935, the Lansdowne Club opened as a 'social, residential and athletic Club for members of social standing...'. It comprises the remaining 18th-century rooms plus a large 1930s extension in the Art Deco style.

Many collections, such as the Lansdowne Amazon and the Lansdowne Hercules, were also bought by American and British museums. Other objects moved to Bowood House, the Lansdowne country house, where Adam also worked. This remains in the family, though large parts of it were demolished, in 1956.

A large office block, having classical fronts with surrounding roads occupies what was the garden: 57 Berkeley Square. This has as a preceding line of its official address the name of the old house. The house's remnant part, extended, forms 9 Fitzmaurice Place.

Extensive renovations began in 2000.

Pictures

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Lansdown House)

• 

  The room now in Philadelphia, before 1915

• 

  Part of the ceiling now in Philadelphia

• 

  The Adam room in the Lloyd's Building

• 

  View in 1820

Outside links

• The Lansdowne Club
• Lansdowne House entry from The DiCamillo Companion to British & Irish Country Houses
• Europe in the age of enlightenment and revolution, a catalogue from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on this house (see index)
• Period Rooms in the Metropolitan Museum of Art , a publication from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on this house (see index)