Dorchester House

The site was originally part of the Manor of Hyde, which was given to William the Conqueror by Geoffrey de Mandeville.

Lewis Vulliamy, who was a notable architect of that time, was instructed to build a house in which a central staircase was a major feature.

[1] The main purpose of the building was to house the extensive collection of paintings that Holford had acquired over many years and at that time were temporarily lodged in a friend's residence in Russell Square.

The 19th-century architecture critic Clarence Cook attributes the grand staircase specifically to Mould, who undertook that task while Vulliamy was incapacitated.

[3] Mould subsequently went on to work with Calvert Vaux on many of the initial buildings and design details of New York's Central Park, very notably, Bethesda Terrace.

Dorchester House was one of the more palatial buildings in London at the turn of the twentieth century and was frequently mentioned in publications of the time.

One of the most celebrated inclusions in Dorchester House was the chimneypiece in the dining room sculptured by Alfred Stevens (see picture at right).

The Victoria and Albert Museum now have the chimneypiece (picture shown below), and according to them it was finished later by Steven's former pupil, James Gamble.

The Chancellor of Oxford University wished to confer an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters upon Twain and asked Reid to convey this invitation.

Reid invited about forty authors and artists to meet Twain, one of whom was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The wedding received a great deal of publicity because King Edward and Queen Alexandra attended.

In 1910 after the death of King Edward VII, former President Theodore Roosevelt came to London to attend the funeral.