Update on the Imperial Hotel renovation at Russell Square

Let's cut the chase*  – oh dear, it's as I feared. Here is an update about the renovation of this marvellous example of 1960's architecture.

It used to look like this, giving luxury airport vibes:

In my previous post I had written that I had been told that the orange letters (Eurostile/Microgramma with gilded outlines and recessed centres) would be reinstated. Er. No. 

A few weeks ago I noticed that much of the scaffolding had been removed. I snapped this image:

Here we can see that he orange letters have been replaced with some boring blocky letters that I'm pretty sure are from a typeface, a font, created for web use. The twelve letters (inc wd #) is now crammed into a panel that before contained just five letters.

It's just THE IMPERIAL now. The word HOTEL has been dropped. Hello cabbie, take me to The Imperial. Perhaps they then get driven to the war museum or the college, ha ha!

A closer look:

Check out the strange choice of letterform here, especially that ugly letter M which is overly wide and has a truncated centre. Unless this M is being used as a feature, some kind of impish design device on logos and branding, I see no reason to choose a 'font' that has such a bizarre quirk which is echoed only once here, at the top of the letter A. To add to this, some of the other letters have very slight angles on the ends of verticals and horizontals, such as the Es which have what I can only describe as italicised ends.  Ditto the very the top of the I (shudder). These quirks further highlight that the letters haven't been installed properly – some of them aren't straight – I mean, how is that possible when there's a simple golden grid to follow?!

I'm disappointed. People are often telling me I moan about things. That's not the case. I'm often merely disillusioned or saddened after hoping for a good outcome, made worse when things could have been better achieved so simply. Also, with my eye for typography and design I can often see that things haven't actually be designed or thought through properly.

Many logos on our high streets today are created as scalable vector files using web-based fonts designed for emails, and on-screen applications. Everything is becoming super-simplified, thus losing an sense of design. Logos or brand names are kept simple so that they can be scaled down small for use on an app icon or a web bar. Back in the day we would design a suite of logos for a client – a small logo for pens and business cards, a mid-sized version for print and press ads, and a larger more detailed one for shops signs, billboards and vehicles. Today, many logos that are simply typed out, often with no regard for letter-spacing. Ah well. This is progress. But I digress.

Here at the The Imperial (hotel) I suggest the letters are based on, probably pulled directly from, a modern scalable font designed for web use because sharp points on A, M, N, V, W, and Z do not scale or render very well on-screen, hence many new fonts designed specifically for computer use have been been pruned. Verdana, created in 1996 and shown below, is fast becoming one of the most ubiquitous typefaces, clearly outstripping Gill Sans, the Sans Serif favourite of the 1930s (British Rail, Penguin Books, BBC, Tommy Hilfger etc). 

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 

I'm also not a fan of Verdana's topped and tailed capital 'I' – there is another similar typeface being used a lot lately that also employs this same device – it implements even wider bars making short words like PIN, HIT and BIO and look very strange indeed (ugh!) – if you can identify it, please let me know.

Thanks for getting this far – I had intended this post to be just a quick update with a couple of pictures and captions, but I got a bit carried away!

*Cut to the chase – surely this should be 'cut out the chase'? Do we not get straight to the point after saying this and miss out the journey?

On the tiles at Russell Square tube station

In yesterday's post I mentioned that I have spotted maker's marks on tiled walls. For instance, above street level, Doulton of Lambeth employed various impressions as per this collection I pulled together almost 12 years ago (I have since found many more) but, until last week I had never seen anything similar on the Underground network.

I use Russell Square station quite often. It is a Lesley Green design, one of many that opened c1906 with ox-blood exteriors and beautifully-tiled and colour-coded connecting tunnels and platforms. I suspect it's because I get distracted by the gorgeous colours and the lovely hand-painted letters that I hadn't noticed this maker's mark:

The image on the left shows the exit tunnel from the westbound platform, but viewed as if coming from the lift. As you can see, there is an impression within a single tile on the left hand side. Here's a close-up:

G. Woolliscroft & Co was a floor tile maker, but there doesn't appear to be any remains of the Melville Road premises where these tiles would have been made. I wonder if Woolliscroft produced the tiles that line all other stations along the Piccadilly Line. If so, it was a huge commission! Seems more likely that quite a few companies in the Staffordshire Potteries area would have been working together on this project, with some companies making the tiles and others adding the colours, doing the glazing and firing. 

Hold the front page!!!! - Dougrose has written this piece about the tile makers although, annoyingly he doesn't identify where any marks tiles can be found, so I will henceforth be keeping my eyes peeled for more evidence – let me know if you see any.

The Imperial Hotel Russell Square – James Bond-tastic

There's a 1960's era hotel facing Russell Square that I absolutely Love love love. I've been concerned about it for decades now. It's in that 'too new to be treasured, not old enough to be saved' zone especially as many people jump on the bandwagon about on about awful it is and how it replaced a huge bit of Edwardian OTT. Indeed that 'To The Turkish Baths' sign in the pavement harks back to that long-gone previous building. Oh yawn. People just don't use their eyes! 

Well, I love it. Check out the extended orange letters (Microgramma? Eurostile?) the vertical stripes of gold mosaic interspersed with fine pebbled concrete, the windows that let in extra light due to being angled, how the design continues through the drive-way and into the courtyard at the rear which leads to a fountain in the same design and an enclosed area containing elements saved from the old hotel.

Bloomsbury has a few other hotels like this, but The Imperial is the King of them all. Yet trying to find info online about this 1960's James Bond gem is proving to be an uphill struggle. I can't even find the name of architect. Instead, all I find is moans and groans and violins about what's gone before. 

Last year, June 2022, when I checked in on the building, there was no sign of the statues said to be saved from the old building and arranged around a wall at the rear. However, the galleon weather vane, the clock and bells were still there, and the sign for the closed casino. I took some photos and a uniformed man came out and told me to stop. I'd assumed the hotel was empty but it seems it was being used as temporary homes for Ukranian refugees. That's nice.

Earlier this month, Dec2023, I was ambling past when I noticed that new hoardings were around the hotel at ground level announcing renovations were underway, to be revealed in Spring 2025. Eek! That's a long way off and who knows what blandification could occur here seeing as what happened behind Debenhams when a totally unique car park from this era was completely destroyed. Where is façadism when you really need it?

I raced round to the back of The Imperial and found the main building was fenced off and looked to be empty. The pic above right shows a small grey quadrant at the bottom left. I'm sad to report that was where the fountain was. And here's how it looked back in June:

Looking back out to the street, towards Russell Square:

Some lovely, simple but effective, blue tiles are visible just above that traffic cone. They arestill there. I say are in the sense of three weeks ago. I hope they get saved or, at least, repurposed:

I need to find out what's happening at this site. I really hope they are going to make something of this zigzag magnificence rather than just destroy it and replace it with another faceless, uninteresting glass blob. OK, so people might miss the old Gothic pile, but there are plenty of similar hotels of that era still standing, and at least here the old fusty spires were replaced with something innovative and of it's time. And groovy too. There really is nothing comparable I can think of, except perhaps the Seifert towers and the Hilton Hotel.

Do let me know if you have any further info.

Update April 2026

The signs on the exterior now tell us that the hotel will reopen this year, planned for 'Summer'. 

This is how it looks at the moment, slathered in scaffolding:

I went to take a closer look to check on the strips of golden mosaic and chatted to one of the site workers. He says the orange HOTEL letters will be reinstated on the panels. The rendition on the hoardings showing how the building will look on completion does indeed show that, but it doesn't appear that they will reinstate the larger IMPERIAL HOTEL letters (see pics above, or here on Google).  

That's a shame. I hope they weren't trashed and were instead sold to an architectural salvage company. Or, perhaps they're going to reuse them somewhere inside the building. Having checked the website for the hotel, I can find no more images of how the exterior or rear courtyard will look. The interiors look like any other modern hotel – they appear to have disregarded this building's 1960's credentials. Such a missed opportunity. I will be going in for a snoop when it opens. 

Time for tea at Russell Square Cabmen's Cafe

The cab shelter at the north west corner of Russell Square always brings a smile to my face. I have stopped there a few times and partaken of the tea and snacks and I would recommend you to do the same.

Sixty-one little green huts were constructed in the late 19th century as places where Hamsom cab drivers could take a break and shelter from the elements whilst swapping stories with other cabbies. These mini-community centres also dissuaded the drivers from dispersing into nearby drinking establishments.
All you need to know about these marvellous little green tardises can be found here.
Of the 61 original huts there are now only 13 left and some are shown here:

It's not often possible to go inside the huts unless you are a cab driver but when they are open most will serve a cup of tea through the hatch and it's a great way to hang out with the people in the know.