View of the northern end of Northumberland Avenue, City of Westminster. Formerly The Grand Hotel, built on the site of Northumberland House. Designed by F. & H. Francis and James Ebenezer Saunders and built between 1882 and 1887, the hotel had seven floors, 500 rooms, a large ballroom and was decorated with Antonio Salviati mosaics. The building was taken over by the British government in World War I to house military officers, and in the 1930s it became a retail headquarters. By 1972, not only had the stone facade weathered, but the whole building was damaged by the new Jubilee Underground line. It was demolished in 1986 and replaced with the similarly styled Grand Buildings designed by the Sidell Gibson Partnership. Originally built on the site of Northampton House which had been built in 1605 by Henry Howard 1st Earl of Northampton on the site of a former nunnery. It was sold to the Earl of Northumberland in the 1640s when it became Northumberland House. Although no longer a fashionable address in the nineteenth century, the Duke of Northumberland of the day was reluctant to leave his ancestral home, despite pressure from the Metropolitan Board of Works, which wished to build a road through the site to connect to the new roads along the Embankment, now Northumberland Avenue. After a fire, which caused substantial damage, the Duke accepted an offer of £500 000 and the building was demolished in 1874.
