Two Temple Place
Two Temple Place, known for many years as Astor House, is a Neo-Gothic building[1] situated near Victoria Embankment in central London, England.
[2] It is known for its architecture, and contains notable works by the likes of William Silver Frith, Sir George Frampton RA, Nathaniel Hitch and Thomas Nicholls.
It hosts exhibitions showcasing publicly owned art from regional collections in the United Kingdom, and is also used as a venue for private hire.
The intention was to symbolize the connection of the path of discovery of his ancestor John Jacob Astor and the linking of United States and Europe.
It would be his office and it had residential space, supporting his desire to create a home away from the United States[nb 3] where he felt his children would be safer from the threat of kidnapping.
[2][7][8][15][nb 4] The building is described by Donald Strachan as follows: Behind the sturdy Portland stone facade, the interior has a slight strange Victoriana-meets-Disney vibe with the otherwise straightforwardly opulent rooms (lots of marble and mahogany) adorned with bizarre details, such as the characters from The Three Musketeers (Astor's favorite book) on the banisters of the main staircase and the gilded frieze in the Great Hall showing 54 seemingly random characters from history and fiction, including Pocahontas, Machiavelli, Bismark, Anne Boleyn, and Marie Antoinette.
[2] Bulldog Trust, a charitable foundation, manages Two Temple Place, which is available to the public to view its collections and, for revenue generation, is hired out.
[2] On 28 October 2011, Two Temple Place opened as the first London venue to specifically showcase publicly owned art from UK regional collections.
[2][7][15] One enters the building through some fine iron gates that lead onto a paved forecourt and lawn with an arcaded boundary wall on one side and on the other a portico designed by Frith.
Through the entrance doors one enters a stone-lined vestibule with carvings in the early Renaissance style and inside this vestibule there is a War Memorial Stone remembering those members of The Society of Incorporated Accountants and Auditors who died in the 1914–18 war, this unveiled by the Duke of York and a Commemoration stone recording the Hall's opening by the Duke and Duchess of York on 19 February 1929.
The staircase has seven mahogany carvings by Thomas Nicholls on the newel posts, these representing characters from Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, which, it seems, was Astor’s favourite novel.
[6] Nicholls’ characters include d'Artagnan himself, Madame Bonacieux, Aramis, shown slipping off a scholar’s gown and at the same time reading a love letter, Milady, Bazin, Athos and Porthos.
[8] The entrance door to the Great Hall is made of mahogany, has a beautifully carved head and nine decorative panels in silver gilt by Sir George James Frampton.
These panels, which were exhibited at the Royal Academy prior to installation in the house, depict in low relief the nine heroines of the Arthurian Legend, to Thomas Malory’s version, of which Tennyson gave a new interpretation.
The third, fourth and fifth panels depict "The Lady of the Lake", "Morgan le Fay" and "Guinevere" (for whom "A man had given all other bliss/And all his worldly worth for this/To waste his whole heart in one kiss/Upon her perfect lips").
The walls are panelled in pencil cedar and surmounted by a frieze in which fifty-four portraits of the heads of characters famous in history and fiction, have been modelled, carved in low relief and then gilded.
The Hall is 35 feet high to the ridge and open to a hammer-beam type roof, a notable example of modern Gothic timber work made from carved Spanish mahogany.
