2-995-541 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Grosvenor Hotel, in course of erection on the site of the old Grosvenor Basin, Belgravia, [London], 1860. 'This hotel...forms an integral part of the new Westend railway terminus, or Victoria station - the most comprehensive plan yet devised for the relief of London traffic. Six lines of railway will...concentrate themselves upon this spot, diverting from London-bridge and its choked approaches perhaps one half of the railway-traveling public, and creating a grand western centre immediately under the walls of Buckingham Palace...[The hotel] will contain...upwards of five hundred apartments-halls, corridors, lobbies, and closets. Of these more than two hundred are bedrooms and dressing-rooms, fifty are public rooms and rooms for the service of the hotel, twenty-six are private dining and drawing rooms, and one hundred and twenty are bathrooms, washing-rooms, and closets...The architecture of the building externally is almost entirely of stone and white brick...Our Engraving is taken from a large perspective view in the exhibition of the Royal Academy...The building is to be completed in the autumn of next year. The architect is Mr. Knowles, of Gray's-inn, and the contractor Mr. Kelk, of South-street, Grosvenor-square'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.