Chesterfield House, Westminster

Chesterfield House was a grand London townhouse built between 1747-52 by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773), statesman and man of letters. The exterior was in the Palladian style, the interior Baroque. It was demolished in 1937 and on its site now stands an eponymous block of flats. It stood in Mayfair on the north side of Curzon Street, between South Audley Street and what is now Chesterfield Street.

The French travel-writer Pierre-Jean Grosley in his 1770 book Londres (translated as Tour to London) considered the house to be equal to the hotels of the nobility in Paris.

It was built on land belonging to Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe by Isaac Ware. In his “'Letters to his Son” Chesterfield wrote from “Hotel Chesterfield” on 31 March 1749: “I have yet finished nothing but my boudoir and my library; the former is the gayest and most cheerful room in England; the latter the best. My garden is now turfed, planted and sown, and will in two months more make a scene of verdure and flowers not common in London. ”

The Quarterly Review (founded 1809), no. 125 reported:

“In the magnificent mansion which the earl erected in Audley Street you may still see his favourite apartments, furnished and decorated as he left them – among the rest, what he boasted of as “the finest room in London”, and perhaps even now it remains unsurpassed, his spacious and beautiful library looking on the finest private garden in London. The walls are covered half-way up with rich and classical stores of literature; above the cases are in close series the portraits of eminent authors, French and English, with most of whom he had conversed; over these, and immediateley under the massive cornice, extend all round, in foot long capitals, the Horatian lines: 'NUNC . VETERUM . LIBRIS . NUNC . SOMNO . ET . INERTIBUS . HORIS : DUCERE . SOLICITAE . JVCUNDA . OBLIVIA . VITAE.' On the mantelpieces and cabinets stand busts of old orators, interspersed with voluptuous vases and bronzes, antique or Italian, and airy statuettes, in marble or alabaster, of nude or semi-nude opera nymphs”

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