2-798-483 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lloyd's Commercial Room - admission of the public, 1844. Visitors in the newly opened Royal Exchange building in the City of London. '"Lloyd's rooms", as they are called, may be pronounced the finest apartments ever devoted to commercial purposes. In designing them, the architect [William Tite] has given a just and noble expression of the purposes to which they are to be devoted. Simple, massive, spacious, and brilliantly lighted, they strike the spectator at once with an idea of fitness - of adaptation to the exact wants of a great trading community. The style used is Venetian, modified to suit the circumstances of the edifice, and enriched after the best Roman models'. From "Illustrated London News", 1844, Vol V.