55 Gracechurch Street

Introduction

The City of London Corporation has in the last week of January 2021 green-lighted the planned construction of a new 30-storey office development at 55 Gracechurch Street. This was the Square Mile’s first tall building approval of 2021 and demonstrates the Corporation’s optimistic outlook for the post Brexit and post-Covid future of the City.

The new building, designed by Fletcher Priest Architects, for Hong Kong based developers Tenacity, is planned to offer 34,000 sqm of office space, almost 2,500 sqm of retail space and more than 1,600 sqm of publicly accessible garden terrace.

It will replace the current occupant of the 55 Gracechurch Street site, an 8-storey office building known as Gracechurch House, which was designed by Sheppard Robson Architects, and was built in 1990-92.

Design and Features

Rising to 30-storeys with 4 basement levels, the new 55 Gracechurch Street will become the first building in the southern part of Gracechurch Street to disrupt the current harmony of scale with the surrounding 8-storey low-rise offices. To lessen the appearance of this intrusion, the main tower has been broken into two separate elements, with a third element attaching to the rear / east elevation.

The first element will appear to blend in with the neighbouring buildings by sharing a similar roof height. The first two storeys are of double height and will host a mix of retail, exhibition, and meeting spaces. This element will feature a publicly accessible covered roof terrace.

Visually separated from the first by a raised pedestal is the second element. This is the main part of the office tower and will contain the larger proportion of the upper floorplates for the remainder of the thirty storeys.

Attached to the rear (east) elevation of the first two, is the third element which has a uniform design for the full height. It will host the main lift shafts, plant equipment and a smaller portion of the floorplates.

Public Realm

A requirement for all new developments in The City is to incorporate some benefits to the public realm. The design for 55 Gracechurch Street includes several such features.

At street level, the design will allow for the free flow of pedestrians through the site. This will provide improved access to Talbot Court and The Ship public house. A new east-west pedestrian route via Brabant Court from Philpot Lane will allow people to avoid the narrow and busy paths of Fenchurch Street and Eastcheap. There is also the possibility of a new north-south route via the courtyard between Fenchurch Street and the new building.

As previously mentioned, there will be new retail and exhibition space incorporated into the lower floors of the building. On the sixth floor there will be a multi-level roof garden, which will be accessible to the public, with secured entry control like the nearby roof gardens at 120 Fenchurch Street and 20 Fenchurch Street.

Location and Adjacent Sites

55 Gracechurch Street is located on the southern half of Gracechurch Street, between Fenchurch Street and Eastcheap, and will visually become the immediate neighbour of 20 Fenchurch Street (The Walkie-Talkie), as part of what is known as the City Cluster.

West

Along its western frontage, the immediate neighbours of the site are 60 Gracechurch Street, an 8-storey office building from the late 1990s known as Allianz House, and to the south 51-54 Gracechurch Street, a late 1920s office building in the Art-Deco style, designed by Leo Sylvester Sullivan, which I have featured in an earlier blog post on this web site. The buildings facing the site from the opposite side of Gracechurch Street are all part of the large Bank Conservation Area, and share the same 8-storey roof line.

South

The southern boundary of the site lies within Talbot Court a short dead-end street, which provides services access to 55 Gracechurch Street. This short street continues as a pedestrian only route to join Eastcheap through a rather grubby and cramped covered passageway.

At the midpoint of Talbot Court, “The Ship” is a small L-shaped Victorian public house from 1873. Signage on the building states that there has been a pub on this site since before the Great Fire of London in 1666. At the time of the Great Fire, it was a coaching inn called “The Talbot”, but this was destroyed by the said fire, which had started just over 100m away in Pudding Lane.

East

The eastern boundary to the 55 Gracechurch Street site meets with the Eastcheap Conservation Area, and with the historic Brabant Court, which has several early 18th century grade II listed buildings adjoining it. These are rare Georgian era survivors for this area of the City.

North

The north of the site joins to a small unnamed courtyard, currently private, but which may become accessible to the public as part of this development. On the rear wall of 60 Gracechurch Street, which also backs on to this private courtyard, is a late 19th century stone armorial of the Clothworkers’ Company, one of City of London’s ancient livery companies. The Company’s motto “My Trust is in God Alone” can partially be seen engraved into the armorial in the photo below which was taken from the rear window of the Paperchase shop on Fenchurch Street.

Also forming the north boundary to 55 Gracechurch Street is a passageway called St. Benet’s Place. It is named after a church of the same name which stood on the corner of Gracechurch Street and Fenchurch Street until it was demolished in 1868. St. Benet’s Place hosts a pair of 18th century decorative wrought iron gates and side panels, which are listed as a Grade II structure. These will be restored and incorporated into the new building.

Conclusion

Whilst there is no doubt that the improvements to the public realm from this development would be welcome, for me the design is not the most inspiring. Its position, on the edge of the City Cluster, being surrounded by low-rise buildings and designated conservation areas will make this a controversial development.

The scheme was approved despite objections from Historic England, The Georgian Group, The Victorian Society, The Conservation Area Advisory Committee and Southwark Council.

There are so many other redevelopments currently underway in The City as at the start of 2021, with many more high-rise projects in the pipeline that have already had planning approval granted. One wonders if, post-covid, there might not be a wholesale return of workers to the City as before to justify yet another tower?

The same developer, Tenacity, has also submitted plans for a replacement of the nearby 8-storey 70 Gracechurch Street with a 33-storey tower. This proposal has yet to be approved.

Sources

• City of London Press Release
• Official Project Web Site
• The Construction Index
• Spacehub Design

Follow the progress of this development project on SkyScraperCity.com.