The History of 14 Princes Gate
The Building
The Royal College of General Practitioners is now situated at 14
and 15 Princes Gate, facing Hyde Park on Kensington Road, on the
end of an elegant Victorian row which also includes the Iranian,
Tunisian, Moroccan and Ethiopian embassies. The College moved into
No. 14, which had been converted into one house from 13 and 14 in
1905 by the owner of No. 13, JP Morgan (senior), in January 1963
and into 15 in 1976. The rear overlooks Ennismore Gardens, one of
the biggest private gardens in London.
Princes Gate
originally constituted two terraces either side of a fine mansion
called Kingston House, the West terrace being completed in 1849.
The buildings were designed by the 27 year old architect of
Liverpool’s St George’s Hall, Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, and built by
the firm of John Elger and John Kelk, responsible for the building
of the Albert Memorial. The name was given to the terraces as they
faced the new gate, built a year before, into Hyde Park, known as
the Prince of Wales’ Gate after the future King, Edward VII.
Kingston House, which is now a
block of flats on the site, erected in 1937, was a stately
residence that had been on the site since 1757, having been built
for the legendary and bigamous Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh. Miss
Chudleigh was an attractive, witty and capricious lady who courted
scandal and hosted celebrated parties at the house. She was the
mistress of the Duke of Kingston, Evelyn Pierrepont, when the house
was built and bigamously married him in 1769, hence the name.
The Occupants
The Morgans
A Mr George Baker bought no. 13
Princes Gate upon its completion in 1849 and would have been able
to see the building of the impressive and distinctive Crystal
Palace opposite for the Great Exhibition of 1851. He retained the
property for 5 years as a family home.
The house was rented and then
purchased from Mr Baker by a prosperous American banker, Junius
Spencer Morgan, the partner of George Peabody in his merchant bank
in the city. When Peabody retired in 1864, Junius took over and
renamed it J.S. Morgan & Co. Morgan was described as an
individual with "nothing ostentatious" about his style of living.
By contrast his son, J. Pierpont Morgan who took over the business
on the death of his father in 1890 was well known for flamboyant
manner as well as his exceptionally high achievements in the worlds
of banking and railways. A friend of Thomas Edison, he had the
first electric light installed in his home. He believed that "the
first thing is character ... before money or anything else" and
built a hugely successful business on that precept.
His residence at Princes Gate was
remarkable by virtue of his vast collection of fine art – including
works by Van Dyck, Reynolds, Constable, Hoppner, Gainsborough,
Velasquez, Turner, Rubens, Raeburn, Fragonard and Rembrandt.
The pieces were immaculately
displayed with such early works as those from 3000 BC. Morgan was
also a prolific collector of manuscripts and miniatures with an eye
for quality and his wife remarked that he would "collect anything
from a pyramid to Mary Magdalene’s tooth". The visitors’ book from
this time is understandably impressive, including royalty and heads
of state from many countries. In around 1904 he bought the
adjourning number 14 Princes Gate from Mrs Schenley, a wealthy
American from Philadelphia.
JP Morgan Junior owned the house
from his father’s death in 1913, but he did not live in it, loaning
it to the Council of War Relief who used it as a maternity home. In
1921, the house left the hands of the Morgans when it was accepted
by the American Government as a home for the American Ambassadors
to the Court of St. James.
The American
government employed Thomas Hastings, architect of the New York
Public Library, to refurbish the building and it is he who
remodelled the front of the amalgamated numbers 13-14 and added the
distinctive red indian heads.
The Ambassadors
Charles Gates
Dawes, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Dawes Plan,
which laid down the plans for German reparations after the First
World War, moved into the house in 1929. He had been vice-president
under President Coolidge for the preceding 4 years and when the
Democrats were elected in 1932, his political career ended and he
returned to banking.
Dawes was succeeded by
Andrew Mellon, a 73-year-old financial adept with
a fine reputation who had a major impact on the financial
administration of the time. The depression diminished his prestige,
however, and he only stayed in the position of Ambassador for most
of 1932.
Robert Worth
Bingham lived in the building from 1932 until 1937 in his
one stint in political office, which he owed to his political
friendships formed in the newspaper industry. He was well-liked
among the English and encouraged close economic ties between the
two nations.
Joseph Kennedy,
father of former president John Fitzgerald Kennedy, moved into the
ambassadorship from a speculative business career, chosen by
Roosevelt for his hot-tempered, cold-blooded approach. He held many
parties in the building and what is now the Long Room was used for
banquets attended by, among others, George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
Though popular initially, this waned along with the British support
for appeasement and he was recalled in October 1940. The subsequent
fame of his sons, of course, is perhaps how he is best remembered
and there are photographs of John and Robert relaxing in the
gardens and peering over the balcony looking out over the patio at
the back.
John Winant,
though appointed as ambassador after Kennedy, did not stay at the
ambassadorial residence, being an austere man and not fond of the
grandiosity of such a building. He was popular, though, during the
war and could be seen walking the streets of London during bombing
raids, instilling confidence in American support.
When Winant resigned in 1946,
Lewis Douglas, a well-known figure during his
tenure, took up residence at a considerably restored Princes Gate,
followed by Walter Gifford between 1950 and 1953.
Gifford kept a low profile, though when he was recalled by
Eisenhower, Churchill complained "What are you doing removing one
of the best ambassadors we have ever had?"
The Embassy left the building in
1955 while Winthrop Aldrich was Ambassador, because of fears of
terrorism, which had existed since the erection of the adjacent
flats. So, after 101 years of American occupation, 14, Princes Gate
moved into the hands of the ITA.
The Independent Television Authority
The Independent Television
Authority set up their headquarters in July 1955 and remained for
six years. During this time, the long room was divided into two
parts, the Director’s office and a boardroom. The staff of eighty
was situated in the upper rooms. As their work increased, they were
moved and the building was unoccupied for a year.
The
Royal College of General Practitioners
The first meetings of the College
were held at the Society of Apothecaries on Blackfriars Lane, EC4,
the College’s first postal address. Larger meetings were held at
the Imperial Hotel and at the BMA in Tavistock Square. In 1957, 17
Cadogan Gardens was used, thanks to an input of funds, but this was
soon filled. A plan to design a building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields
was thought too ambitious and abandoned in 1959.
Mrs Thelma Glyn-Hughes, wife of
the first Honorary Treasurer, found that 14, Princes Gate was
available and the College bought the freehold in July 1962 for
£175,000. John Hunt described this as "one of the most important
incidents in our young College’s life". The new building offered
the opportunity to house a library and accommodate members,
allowing for meetings and discussions to go on, at times, into the
night. The highly significant issue of vocational training was long
argued in the rooms and flats of 14, Prince’s Gate.
This was a building that could be
on a par with the other Royal Colleges and be a dignified and
suitable symbol of the College. It was also one which could be used
to entertain with confidence and be a non-verbal statement of the
College’s vision of itself.
In 1976, the opportunity arose to
purchase number 15, Prince’s Gate and an agreement was made with
the owner that he could live in the ground and first floor flats
for another 12 years. With the inflation of the late 1970s, the
real cost was greatly reduced, but problems arose in 1988 involving
not only a case of breach of agreement but also a case of
negligence on the part of the College’s lawyers. The former case
was settled out of court in 1992 and the College became, in 1992,
the holder of the freehold of 13/14 and 15 Prince’s Gate.
The Iranian Embassy Siege
On Wednesday, 30 April 1980, the
Iranian Embassy situated at 16 Princes Gate was violently invaded
by terrorists from Arabistan, in the most dramatic event in Princes
Gate’s history. The event fixed the eyes of the world on the area
and the siege was almost continuously televised. It lasted for five
days and seven people were killed. The College was evacuated and
the SAS used it as a base to plan their operations, drilling holes
in the walls to observe the terrorists’ movements. Eventually, when
a hostage had been killed on the fifth day, the SAS stormed the
building, abseiling from the roof, bursting through a wall and,
famously, throwing grenades through the front windows of the
Embassy.