If you wanted a hotel on the Monopoly board then Park Lane
is where you would put it. Someone has finally put another at 45 Park Lane
London W1, but only after a long and varied history of development in this location. Perhaps the most bizarre episode was the grey
concrete building ‘designed’ by Walter Gropius which became, for years, the home of the Playboy Club in the
UK. The origins of this are related in The Property Boom by Oliver Marriott. (1)
Jack Cotton, the flamboyant post-war property developer, first
enlisted the assistance of Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and one of the
pioneers of modern architecture, to assist following his catastrophic proposals
to redevelop the Monico site at Piccadilly Circus. Where many other post-war
developers, such as Harry Hyams and Rudolph Palumbo, sought to avoid wider
attention to their activities, Cotton, a relentless self –publicist, had by
1959 increasingly come to believe in that publicity. In October he held a press
conference to announce to the world his development of the Pan Am Building
above Grand Central Station in New York. Flush with that triumph he held his
second press conference in seven days to unveil his proposals for Piccadilly
Circus. The planning committee of London County Council had already agreed to
grant consent - but for one small technicality which remained outstanding. The reaction to
the plans and model he displayed at the press conference was one of horror and
the Minister of Housing stepped in to call an enquiry. That would have been
impossible had Cotton waited until the technicality had been agreed with the
planning authority before making his announcement. Marriott conveys the
subsequent disfavour of the development proposals by quoting the planning
inspector appointed, Colin Buchanan, later famous for the Buchanan Report.
“The applicants must
now greatly regret that they put out the perspective sketch which they did at
Mr Cotton’s press conference in October 1959. This was a drawing showing the
building with a crane on top, and a large advertisement ‘Snap Plom For
Vigour’ on the main front panel. Had this
not been issued it is a fair guess that the building would now be in course of
erection……It does not surprise me that strong feelings have been aroused, for
the building could scarcely have been presented in a cruder light.
Following that rejection Cotton persisted with his attempts
to redevelop the Monico site for many years and eventually enlisted the world
famous Gropius to advance that aim. Until then, Cottons buildings had been
designed by his own firm of architects, Cotton, Ballard and Blow, of which he
was the principal. This developer/
architect arrangement appears rather strange fifty years later and Marriott
notes that it was rare even then. He comments that the resulting buildings were
no better or worse than the post-war average for speculative office buildings
but Cotton never sponsored any development of much aesthetic distinction. The
Pan Am building may be the exception - although that was fiercely criticised in
New York. In the event, producing one of the 20th centuries most
famous architects as his adviser did not resolve Cotton’s problems at the
Monico site. He did however set Gropius to work on another property that he had
acquired at 45 Park Lane.
Marriott states that
this was a Victorian mansion built in 1868 which had been the home of the
banker, Sir Phillip Sassoon and, before that the site had been occupied by the
diamond magnate, Barney Barnato. Unfortunately this would appear to be
incorrect as it would make for an even more ripping yarn. Other sources
identify the Sassoon mansion as being at 25 Park Lane.
Barnato, a
semi-literate cockney born in Petticoat Lane was the son of a professional
bar-room bouncer and tapster. After a brief career as a prize fighter and music
hall turn he followed his brother to South Africa. There he made a vast fortune in the Kimberley
diamond mines and hired Spencer House on his return to London. In 1896 he
attended court to stand bail for a friend and gave his address to the
magistrate. “But that’s Lord Spencer’s House. Are you his major domo?” demanded
the magistrate. “I’m my own bloody domo” shouted back Barnato, the very
incarnation of the proverbial ‘rough diamond.’ (2)
Unfortunately he did not live to see the great mansion he
was building at Park Lane. He suffered a breakdown, probably delirium tremens,
and fell of the ship, an assumed suicide, on his way back from a visit to South
Africa. His considerable fortune was divided between his family including his
sister Sarah and her husband Abraham Rantzen, great-grandparents of TV
presenter Esther Rantzen.
However, to return to the Jack Cotton saga, the architects
at Cotton, Ballard and Blow had already completed the preliminary plans when he
met Gropius and brought him in to design the elevation of the proposed
building. As a result the planning application proceeded smoothly, although virtually
the only aesthetic difference was that the building was faced with concrete
blocks not Portland Stone as originally intended. This might, given the modus operandii of the post-war
developers, have been expected to bring about a cost saving and consequent
increase in the potential profit. In this case Marriott notes that the main
effect of employing Gropius – apart, perhaps, from the mesmeric impact of his
name on the planning authority- was to increase the total cost of the project
from £650,000 to £800,000. The completed building was no more or less
distinguished than any other speculative office building of the period but, by stroke
of fortune, it was the only vacant building between the Dorchester and Hilton
Hotels on Park Lane. The Playboy Club deemed this the only suitable location
for its first foray into Great Britain in 1966 and Cotton was able to let it to
them for a higher rental than the prevailing rate for offices at that time.
Walter Gropius was described by Paul Klee as ‘The Silver
Prince’, and by Tom Wolfe as “the most
dazzling figure of European architecture during the inter-war years of the 20th
century …….irresistibly handsome to
women to women, correct and urbane in a classic German manner…….. a figure of
calm certitude and conviction at the centre of the maelstrom” It is not
known whether he visited his Park Lane creation once occupied by the Playboy
Club and dubbed "the Hutch on the Park". From the foregoing description he might well
have held his own with the venue's other clientele which included actors Sean
Connery, Michael Caine and Joan Collins, and footballer George Best. As to the
Bunny Girls and their outfits it is again regrettable that it was his Bauhaus
colleague, Mies van der Rohe who coined the phrase ‘less is more’.(3)
The Playboy Club closed in 1982, following a police raid
over suspected illegal gambling, despite no subsequent evidence of wrongdoing.
It lay vacant for 13 years until in 2008 Westminster City Council gave consent
for conversion into a luxury hotel. In its press release the Council stated
that “the outside of the grey concrete-clad
building will be redesigned to be made more harmonious with the mixture of
neo-Georgian blocks and eighteenth century buildings which line Park Lane and
surrounding streets.” (4) In keeping
with the slightly surreal history of the building the press release went on to
say that the designs had been drawn up by starchitect Thierry W Despont, who
has created homes for the likes of Bill Gates and Calvin Klein and collaborated
on the Getty Center galleries in Los Angeles. His resulting confection is a
homage to art deco, the ‘drab concrete’ exterior being re-clad with metal fins.
Neo-Georgian in this instance may be a tongue in cheek reference to the
corresponding reigns of Georges V or VI?
1. The Property Boom Oliver Marriott
2.
The London Rich Peter
Thorrold
3.
Bauhaus to Our House Tom Wolfe
4.
http://www.westminster.gov.uk/press-releases/2008-09/star-architect-to-turn-former-playboy-club-into-ma/
