The RGS's imposing building is based around a property called 'Lowther Lodge' - sitting at the top of Exhibition Road by one entrance to Hyde Park, which was purchased over a century ago.
Some of the land was sold, and new additions were made, particularly the glass pavilion which is now the main entrance to the building. The refurbishment of the Member's Room upstairs has also created an impressive space which can be booked by Fellows for meetings. It is a Grade II* listed building.
It was also apparently one of the first private houses to have a passenger lift.
Here's the details from the Historic England listing.
I'm going to try to explore the building and spot these historic details over the next four years. I've already been fortunate to have a tour in my role as a trustee.
TQ 2679 NE 85/20 14.1.70
CITY OF WESTMINSTER KENSINGTON GORE, SW7 No 1 (Royal Geographical Society).
GV II*
Mansion, now headquarters of learned society. 1874-5, by Richard Norman Shaw for William and Alice Lowther; extension of 1928-30 by G. L. Kennedy and F. B. Nightingale for Royal Geographical Society.
Red brick with gauged and rubbed brick dressings; gabled and hipped plain tile roofs; tall fluted brick stacks. Complex half-H plan with porch to right of central hall and former stable range projecting from wing to left. Queen Anne style. Complex facade of 2 storeys and attic, with 3 main bays to centre flanked by wings with hipped roofs. Segmental arches and second-floor flat arches over cross windows with leaded lights. Two pedimented bays to centre, breaking through coved cornice; wing to right has semi-circular arched doorway, and first-floor balcony with rendered coving from which tall pedimented dormer breaks through coved cornice of hipped roof; wing to left dominated by tall stacks breaking through cover cornice of hipped roof. Whole composition is also articulated by string courses broken by pilasters, mostly to dormer and bay windows. Similar but simpler 2-storey wing to left including former stables to far left with pedi- mented dormer windows and blind oculi. Rear and side elevations in similar style, with tall pedimented dormers surmounting canted bay windows and lateral stack to recessed bay of rear elevation.
Extension of 1928-30 to left, has one-storey main elevations with tripartite window to canted return and statues of Shackleton by S. Sergeant Jagger (c.1932) and Dr Livingstone by T. B. Huxley- Jones (c.1953) set in classical stone niches.
Interior: fine Queen Anne interiors with moulded cornices, classical fireplaces and panelled doors set in eared and pedimented architraves.
Principal rooms include Hall with panelled dado, walnut-beamed ceiling and bolection-panelled overmantle over classical fireplace with tiles painted with coats of arms of Lowther family by Alice Lowther; large semi-circular archway to stair-hall to right with panelled dado and fine turned-baluster staircase rising above small former Flower Room;
Map Room, former Drawing Room to rear of hall has decorative plaster frieze and coffered ceiling with decorative plaster spandrels.
1928- 30 extension has large lecture room and Soanian-style ambulatory.
Lowther Lodge was one of the earliest and most influential works in the Queen Anne style, being hailed as an 'artistic landmark' in the Building News of 1875. (M. Girovard, Sweetness and Light, 1977; A. Saint, Richard Norman Shaw, 1976; Survey of London, Vol.38.
Listing NGR: TQ2675979634Sources:
“Geographical Record.” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, vol. 44, no. 10, 1912, pp. 769–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/199003. Accessed 21 May 2024.
Image: Alan Parkinson - Lowther Lodge door from Kensington Gore - shared on Flickr under CC license
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