The Reform Club in London: a nineteenth-century collaboration - architectural design of private, social club

Magazine Antiques, June, 1994 by Mary Anne Hunting

In the mid-nineteenth century during a period of unrivaled prosperity in England, the gentlemen's clubs of London were frequented by an emerging middle class in pursuit of power, wealth, and social status. These private clubs not only served as a nucleus for political and business activities, but also as a convivial haven for gambling, reading, socializing, and excellent dining. They evolved from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century taverns and coffeehouses taken over by a limited number of clients for their exclusive use, with the landlord retained as manager.(2)

The nineteenth-century clubhouses were created as grand public spaces, unlike some of the earlier clubs--Whites (founded in 1693), Brooks (founded in 1764), and Boodles (founded in 1762)--that resembled private houses. A building type in their own right, the clubhouses on Pall Mall were described as "an almost uninterrupted line of temples dedicated to the social intercourse and the interchange of ideas"(3) (see Fig. 1). These clubhouses were designed by the best architects of the time and are still among the most significant structures in Great Britain.

Each club was created with a distinct purpose and constitution, and the Reform Club in particular has a rich and intriguing history. It was founded in 1836 by the Liberal whip Edward "Bear" Ellice (1781-1863) to promote "the social intercourse of the reformers of the United Kingdom"(4) and to provide a social milieu for the exchange of radical ideas generated by the Reform Bill of 1832. Membership was open to those who professed to be liberal, regardless of their political persuasion. The club appealed to men of diverse backgrounds and occupations, including landowners, bankers, merchants, industrialists, churchmen, architects, writers, military men, politicians, and lawyers.(5) Among notable past members are William Ewart Gladstone, Joseph Hume, Sir Winston Churchill, Henry James, and William Thackeray. The French writer Jules Verne described the Reform Club members in his Around the World in Eighty Days of 1873 when, in the drawing room, Phileas Fogg greeted his "habitual partners at whist," who were "wealthy and respected persons even in this Club, which numbers amongst its members the princes of industry and finance."(6)

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The first meetings of the Reform Club were held in Ellice's own house at 14 Carlton House Terrace, and soon afterwards a house at 104 Pall Mall was adapted for the club by the architect Decimus Burton (1800-1881). Although schemes for enlarging the Pall Mall house were prepared by the architects Edward Blore (1787-1879) and George Basevi (1794-1845), the members decided that a new building was necessary to accommodate the growing membership and activities.

On May 17, 1837, Ellice proposed to the general committee, the governing body of the club, that "seven architects of talent and experience"(7) be invited to submit plans and estimates in a competition to design a new clubhouse that would replace the existing building. Charles Barry, Edward Blore, Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863), and Sydney Smirke (1798-1877) accepted the invitation. The members set a budget of [pound]37,500 for the building and what the building committee's minutes called, without further definition, "fixtures."(8) However, the four competing architects asked for a budget of [pound]44,000 (excluding bookcases, furniture, and gas fittings). Despite the fact that this amount exceeded the cost of any clubhouse in London at the time, the members agreed to the request. Little did they realize that in 1841 when the new clubhouse opened, the total cost would be more than double the amount originally proposed.

The varied plans submitted by the architects included an interpretation of an Elizabethan Renaissance mansion by Blore, a Greco-Roman palace by Cockerell, and a plan for a Corinthian temple by Smirke. But it was Barry's Italian palazzo design that won the competition on November 25, 1837 (see Pl. II, Fig 1). Barry was well established in London at this time, as he had been awarded a number of major architectural projects, most importantly the Palace of Westminster (1835-1870; see p. 860).

Barry's proposal for the Reform Club was similar to his two other Renaissance revival club buildings in England: the Travellers' Club in London (1829-1831; see Fig. 1) and the Athenaeum in Manchester (1837-1839; now the City Art Galleries, Princess Street). The Reform Club, however, became Barry's masterpiece in this style. He had studied the Renaissance palaces of Rome when he was there in 1820. The exterior of the Reform Club was based on the Palazzo Farnese, which Antonio da Sangallo the younger (1484-1546) worked on from 1513 until his death, and which was altered in the second half of the sixteenth century by Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Giacomo della Porta (c. 1537-1602).(9) Barry's genius was to draw on the Italian High Renaissance to create a new architectural style that lasted well into the second half of the nineteenth century.