How many Spurtle readers have gazed recently upon the eastern flank of the Balmoral Hotel and considered its channelled pilasters dividing the ground-floor shopfronts, its glazed mezzanine (with oculi to two bays to outer right), its tall pedimented, key-blocked entrance bays to centre, left and right with oculi to the mezzanine, and its first floor detailed like its second only without pediments?
Probably all of you.
For aside from its sheer, massive authority at the eastern end of Princes Street, it is what Historic Scotland describes as the Category A-listed building's 'extravagant French and Scottish detailing' that lends it much of its charm. You would think owners Rocco Forte Collection would want to preserve such detail, but apparently they do not.
In recent applications to City of Edinburgh Planners (Refs 12/00449/LBC, 12/00449/ADV), they seek permission to display an advertisement on the North Bridge side of the building promoting their Hadrian's Restaurant. They propose an understated, moderately tasteful sign (in charcoal grey painted metal with fretted lettering and halo lighting effect to logo with white opalescent backlit infill to smaller text) in keeping with the understated, moderately tasty food within, but it would be positioned in such a way as to cover over the central stone niche pictured below.
Surely it is not beyond the wit of Rocco Forte Collection to have someone design a concave sign which would complement rather than contradict the architect's decorative intentions? Is there not even scope to fill this niche with something more interesting, such as an eye-catching bust of a certain Roman emperor?
Certainly, almost anything would be preferable to the current proposal's lumpen attachment to straight edges.
Built in 1896–1902, the North British Railway Hotel was the brainchild of William Hamilton Beattie who had earlier designed other local landmarks such as the Jenner's Department Store, the Cowan Building on West Register Street (Issue 168), and Nos 40–4 Elm Row (Breaking news, 28.2.12).
On opening, it comprised 700 rooms (300 of them bedrooms), 13,000 tons of stone, 1,600 girders, 8 million bricks, 26 acres of plasterwork and 24 miles of cornice. There were 6 acres of floor, much of it supported by fireproof Stuart's Granolithic.
'The Cockburn Association were initially horrified by the scale of the hotel, but came to recognise it as a "friendly monster".'
[Spurtle gratefully acknowledges the technical and historical expertise mined from the Historic Scotland website.]
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