19-20 Cork Street

Summary

An art gallery, built as offices for Edward Howard in around 1816.

Reasons for Designation

19-20 Cork Street, London W1 is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* the building contains features from its original design as an early, purpose-built office, including architectural fronts facing 32 Old Burlington Street and to Cork Street and interior strong rooms;
* it also includes the top-lit space which is now the principal gallery showroom of Redfern Gallery and which appears to also be associated with the early history of the building as an office and later a silk importers and woollen merchants;
* the tactful extensions to the building in the form of the additional top floor and the new shopfront in the 1860s were representative of the changing forms of merchandising and administration at that time;
* the reconfiguration of the gallery space by Brian O’Rorke and Arudell Clarke in 1933 was ahead of the times when it was created and has since become the norm for the exhibition of modern art works. This original scheme still exists in outline in the present gallery space of Browse and Darby.

Historic interest:
* the survival of three distinct periods of the building’s history can still be read; as an office development of 1816 in the garden of an existing house; as a showroom for imported silks and woollens and later as art galleries;
* as the setting for the Mayor Gallery and later Browse and Darby and the Redfern Gallery, all of which have distinguished histories as champions of modern art in England and which had a major role in establishing Cork Street as a centre of influence for modern art in England with an international reputation.

Group value:
* with 32 Old Burlington Street (Grade II), a house of 1718-1723 designed by Colen Campbell.

History

Cork Street was laid out in 1718 as part of the Burlington Estate. The site on which 19-20 Cork now stands was originally a part of the back garden of 32 Old Burlington Street, a terraced town house built in 1718-23 by Colen Campbell. A plan in the Chatsworth archives of 1770 shows no buildings in the back garden of 32 Old Burlington Street other than a small, square hut or privy at the far end of the site.

By 1817 Howard and Gibbs, money brokers, were operating from offices at 18 Cork Street (a renumbering exercise in 1936 resulted in the present address of 19-20 Cork Street, but prior to that it was known as 18 and 18a Cork Street). Edward Howard, a conveyancer, had bought 32 Old Burlington Street in 1814 and he seems to have built the Cork Street building at the bottom of his garden as an office from which to operate his business as a money broker. In 1818 the property was the registered office of Howard and his business partner Gibbs, trading as Star Life Assurance Company.

Howard and Gibbs were declared bankrupt in 1821 and an auction of the company's assets was held in 1822. The description of the property was ‘A Capital Suit of Offices at the back of the above [that is 32 Old Burlington Street], with entrance from Cork Street, comprising 13 good rooms, two strong rooms and other conveniences, extremely well adapted for a solicitor of eminence, and so admirably arranged that at trifling expense they may be converted into several sets of Business Chambers, to produce a rent of £300 per annum’. This would seem to correct the surmise in the Survey of London volume for St James (see SOURCES) that 'The general character of this building suggests that it was erected as a stable block'.

The building then appears to have been used for a variety of purposes following the sale. In 1836 a silk mercer, Thomas Ellwood, who was resident at the address made his will and in 1851 a firm of silk importers, John Green and Co were in occupation. By 1859 the first floor was being advertised for rent as a furnished residence. In 1860 building works were undertaken by a Mr Eales, who can probably be identified as Charles Eales or his son Frederick Earnest Eales. The size of the tender was £1,455 which was a sizeable sum and the probable explanation was the addition of the top floor with a front that matched the existing four-bay Cork Street façade and a gambrel roof to the rear. It seems probable that the present shop front with a central window flanked by doors was also added at this time.

Between 1860 and 1900 the building was tenanted by silk importers, tailors and wool merchants. In 1869 the racehorse auctioneers Messrs Morris had offices there and in 1895 the gunmaker Thomas Perkins. The Goad Insurance map of 1889 described the premises as a Woollen Warehouse and the map showed the rear, single-storey portion had a circular skylight, which may be a cartographer's simplification of the present octagonal skylight.

The first use of the building as an art gallery seems to have come in 1919 with Bromhead Cutts, fine art dealers. From January to November 1925 the Mayor Gallery was in occupation, but from 1926 to 1932 Bromhead Cutts were again the tenants.

Real change came in 1933 when Mayor again took over the front part of the premises, facing Cork Street and employed Brian O’Rorke to redesign the interior, together with the interior decorator, Arundell Clarke. O’Rorke was a New Zealander who had come to England as a child. He studied engineering at Cambridge and was a student at the Architectural Association. Soon after graduation he entered the competition for the new headquarters building for the RIBA in Portland Place in partnership with Kenneth Peacock. Their design won a third place, from amongst a field of 284 British and international entrants. The Mayor Gallery project was amongst O’Rorke’s earliest works and was highly considered at the time, attracting praise from Robert Byron writing in Harpers Bazarre in 1933, as well as in The Times, Daily Mail, Vogue and Design for Today. His later career included a number of ocean liners for the Orient Line, notably SS Orion and SS Orcades, and Imperial Airways where his capacity as both an engineer and architect proved to be a useful combination. Amongst his later architectural work are Ashcombe Tower, Dawlish (Grade II) and The Herstmonceux Science Centre in Sussex (Grade II*).

At the Mayor gallery O’Rorke’s scheme was praised for its creation of a series of small connected compartments and recesses which enabled the pictures to be isolated into subtle groups or individually without interference. Anthony Bertram in Design for Today wrote that ‘The gallery feeling is replaced by the room feeling’ and this, more domestic sense meant that the pictures … ‘tell’ decoratively. They do not compete with one another. They are part of a decorative scheme rather than goods displayed for sale’. This scheme played to the small space within the gallery, but the careful hidden lighting and the prominent inclusion in the gallery space of a staircase and central column as well as the chimney breast with its electric bar fire helped to divide and domesticate the space. The plain walls, painted a blue/white and simple, streamlined treatment of features helped to concentrate the viewer’s attention towards the works of art on display and was, in its way, revolutionary for its time. Robert Byron wrote ‘The exhibition in Cork Street is all that an exhibition should be. The setting and lighting, by Mr Brian O’Rorke, are in themselves something to go and see, not for their obtrusiveness and ostentation, but as showing how the very lack of those qualities, which is essential in a background to works of art, has been far better achieved by plain roughcast walls, severe lines and an even distribution of light than by pretentious velvet-ridden domesticity of the ordinary dealer’s.’ In addition to the design of the gallery, with pale blue walls and hidden lighting O’Rorke’s scheme also featured an orange painted exterior with white lettering on the shop front which would have been exceptional in the 1930s and have drawn attention.

There has been a degree of adaptation of this interior and the original colour schemes have been lost, but some of the essentials of the design at ground-floor level can still be seen in a comparison of the published photographs at the time of the gallery’s opening and its appearance now; the staircase, the pillar and the clean lines are still present.

The exhibition which excited Byron was the first in a series mounted by the Mayor Gallery and which led to the establishment of Cork Street as the fulcrum for international and home-grown modern art in England. Frederick (or Freddy) Mayor first established his gallery in 1925 in Cork Street and then moved to Sackville Street. He dealt in progressive art and promoted Picasso and Leger amongst others. In 1933 he returned to 18 Cork Street and in partnership with Douglas Cooper established a gallery that was the first to proclaim the merits of avant-garde art from across the continent and Britain. His first show in Cork Street in 1933, called ‘Recent Paintings by English, French and German Artists’ featured works by Braque, Picabia, Max Ernst as well as Picasso and Leger and also the young British artists Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash and Francis Bacon (in his first London show).

The indifference and occasional antagonism of the English art establishment towards modern art also led to the start of a group of progressive British artists called Unit One. They held weekly meetings in the gallery chaired by Paul Nash with Douglas Cooper as the Secretary. The group was a loose affiliation of artists with common cause and included the painters Nash, Edward Wadsworth, Ben Nicholson, Tristram Hillier, Edward Burra, John Bigge and John Armstrong. Amongst sculptors were Henry Moore, and Barbara Hepworth and architect members included Wells Coates and Colin Lucas. The historian Herbert Read was introduced to the group by Moore and a show was organised titled ’A Survey of Contemporary Art’ that coincided with the publication of his influential book ‘Art Now’. The gallery also showed German artists who were persecuted by the Nazis as Jewish or avant garde and little known in England. Max Ernst, Paul Klee and George Grosz would later go on to achieve international fame.

The Mayor Gallery closed in 1939 and moved to a new location after the war. In its place came the Roland, Browse and Delbanco gallery, initially dealing in Old Master paintings. The inclusion of Lillian Browse as one of the partners caused a gradual shift towards modern art. She had published books on Augustus John and Walter Sickert and during the war she had organised several of the famous series of wartime exhibitions held in the National Gallery. Under her care Henry Moore continued to exhibit in the gallery space and William Nicholson was a new recruit in the late 1940s.

To the rear of the site, in what became 20 Cork Street, was the Redfern Gallery, also specialising in modern art. The gallery moved to the space at the rear of the Mayor Gallery in 1936 under the directorship of Nan Kivell (later Sir Rex Nan Kivell) a New Zealander who encouraged and showed European painters and Australians including Sidney Nolan and Loudon Sainthill. Concentrating on emerging talents the gallery staged the first one-person shows for Patrick Proctor, Bryan Organ and David Oxtoby and in the 1960s it held the first show of optical and kinetic art in Britain.

Both spaces continue to operate as commercial art galleries to the present.

Details

An art gallery, built as offices for Edward Howard in around 1816.

MATERIALS & PLAN: London stock brick laid in Flemish bond with stone dressings and a lead and slate roof. The building has three floors and a basement to the street front range and a single storey and basement to the northern side at the rear.

EXTERIOR: the western, street front has four bays to the upper floors. The ground floor has a mid-C19 shop front of colourwashed stucco with a central plate-glass window divided by a bronze mullion and transom with a panelled stall riser beneath. A sunken area in front of the window is protected by a tubular railing and grille. At either side are entrances flanked by pilasters and above is an entablature with deep cornice. The first floor has four sash windows with plate glass fenestration and the second floor has four windows with three panes by four. Window heads are all splayed and there is a string course at the sill level of the second floor and a stone coping to the top of the wall. The brickwork has been colourwashed. There is a chimney stack to the ridge at left of centre.

The east or rear of the building has at the ground floor level a façade which was intended to be seen from the rear of 32 Old Burlington Gardens. This has three bays at right grouped under a pediment with a central, round-arched recessed bay with a sash window of three by four panes and a splayed brick head. At either side are sash windows of similar size, all with stone cills. The pediment has a simple moulded stone cornice and a coping. At left of this is a single bay which may be a later addition and slightly recessed with a narrower sash window. Behind this ground floor front is the east front of the Cork Street range. This has a three-bay front at first-floor level. The central and left hand bays each have a sash window of three by four panes and the right hand window has been blocked. The second floor has a gambrel roof with a central doorway which leads to a fire escape. The upper slope of the slate roof has a row of skylights.

INTERIOR: the ground floor of the western gallery (now Browse and Darby, formerly Mayor) is an open space divided by a boxed-in chimneystack to the northern end and a structural metal pole to the south. The staircase against the east wall was probably inserted by O’Rorke in his refit of the space in 1933 and retains his solid balustrade capped by a simple wooden handrail. It was originally L-shaped but has since been straightened to form one flight. The structural pole was used by O’Rorke to support a portion of suspended ceiling which stretched from the wall of the chimneybreast and masked hidden lighting.

The rear of the site is occupied by the Redfern Gallery. This is approached by a corridor which extends at the north from the left hand doorway on the Cork Street front and opens into the roughly square, single-storey gallery space which has a pitched, pyramidal roof which rises to a central octagonal skylight. To the northern and southern sides of this are further, trapezoid skylights. The basement floor is approached by a wide staircase with shaped ends to the open treads and a metal balustrade which is believed to have come from George V’s royal yacht Britannia. The boat was stripped of its fittings and sunk off the Isle of White according to the king’s wishes after his death in 1936 and a selling exhibition of fittings from Britannia was held in the gallery in 1937-8.

The basement floor has a series of brick groin arches supported by square piers which are now used as stock rooms and storage for the gallery but appear to be the original strong rooms referred to in the auction catalogue of 1822. The first floor is one gallery space, divided by the chimney breast at its northern end and the second floor has a corridor to the west side and two rooms, one of them for storage and the other a showing room and office.

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, Bradley, S, The Buildings of England: London 6 Westminster, (2003), 516
Sheppard, FHW, Survey of London: Volumes 31 and 32: St James Westminster (Part 2), (1963), 489
Morrison, K, English Shops and Shopping An Architectural History, (2003), 39-40
Farr, Dennis, The Oxford History of English Art; English Art 1870-1940, (1978), 276-277, 350, 362
Browse, Lillian, Duchess of Cork Street, (1999)
Read, Herbert, Unit One, (1934)
Byron, R, The New Painting in Harper's Bazaar, (June 1933), 32

Websites
Dictionary of National Biography entry on Unit One, accessed 05 December 2022 from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-96310;jsessionid=C09D6AFA23A9E6BA2C23CD314CA50575

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