Carlton Hotel, London

The Carlton Hotel was a luxury hotel that operated from 1899 to 1940. It was designed by the architect C. J. Phipps as part of a larger development that included the rebuilding of Her Majesty's Theatre, which is adjacent to the hotel site. The Carlton was originally run by the Swiss hotelier César Ritz, with Auguste Escoffier as the head chef. In its early days it was one of London's most fashionable hotels and drew some customers away from the Savoy Hotel, which Ritz and Escoffier had previously managed.

The hotel lost some of its prestige after Ritz retired, but continued to trade profitably until it was badly damaged by German bombing in 1940. The British government requisitioned the building in 1942. After the Second World War the shareholders of the hotel sold the lease of the site, and the surviving parts of the building were demolished in 1957–58. The site is now occupied by the 17-storey block of New Zealand High Commission.

The site, on the corner of the Haymarket and Pall Mall, part of the Crown Estate, was leased by the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues to the Earl of Dudley. Dudley died in 1885, when the lease had six years left to run. In 1890, the Commissioners entered into a building agreement with the property developer Tod Heatley to redevelop the site. After prolonged negotiation and litigation, the development was taken over in 1895 by Law Guarantee and Trust Society, Ltd, which commissioned the theatre architect C. J. Phipps to draw up plans to rebuild Her Majesty's Theatre and to construct a hotel on the site alongside. The actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree agreed to take a lease of the theatre, the Office of Woods approved the plans, and building started in July 1896.

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