2208–10 St. James Place
1898, Wilson Eyre
The contrast of dark-red brick and white-marble detailing makes the facades of these Victorian Gothic townhouses sparkle. The pointed brick arches of the tall narrow windows rest on marble impost blocks and are framed by marble drip moldings terminating in floral ornaments. The third-floor windows are especially elaborate: paired lancets subsumed under a single arch of alternating brick and marble voussoirs inside a marble molding. The inspiration here is not ecclesiastical, but the late medieval domestic and civic architecture of northern Italy so much admired by John Ruskin in his influential book The Stones of Venice.