With my eye attuned to the work of Norman Shaw, I realised that the large red brick building at the bottom of St. James’s Street is by him, with its charateristically elaborate corner tower and high Dutch gables. Indeed, it is. It was designed in 1882 for the Alliance Insurance Company at the same time that he was doing work for the Royal Academy.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
On the same theme, a stroll around leafy Bedford Park W4 rounded off, naturally, with a blog?
We actually have 21 architectural drawings relating to Norman Shaw’s Alliance Insurance Company building in the Royal Academy of Arts collection. I’m afraid only one of them is available to view on the RA website at present, but we hope to digitise and make more of them available online soon. Here’s a link to it:
http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?record=O19231