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It’s 1931 and the original building at 68 Lombard Street is proving too small for purpose, and it is time for the Bank to think of something radical. Considering that banking has taken place on this site since 1563 it seems fitting that the space should be developed to fit the changing needs of banking. An attractive design is chosen, and space created over several floors to house Martins’ Principal London Office. The rebuilding of 68 Lombard Street features in the 11 March 1931 edition of The Architects’ Journal. Thanks to the kind permission of the publisher, the article is featured below, along with some of its accompanying images.
Sallying forth into the streets, amid the dancing lights and shadows of this populous financial quarter, one cannot fail to experience at the sight of the new {London} headquarters of Martins Bank that affinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford : to be enamoured, not only by the sympathetic manner in which Sir Herbert Baker, a.r.a., has preserved the traditions of the famous Grasshopper, but by meditating upon the history of what may well be the oldest banking house in the City of London.
Main Entrance	Entrance Hall		War Memorial	Manager’s Room
Tradition tells that Sir Thomas Gresham, a mercer, who founded the Royal Exchange on the north side of Cornhill, carried on a banking business on the site as early as 1563, and from him is derived the sign of the Grasshopper. Sir Richard Martin, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1588 and Master of the Mint from 1572 until his death in 1617, had, without doubt, frequent transactions with Gresham; and thus began the association of the Martin family with the Grasshopper which has continued to the present day. Owing to the destruction of title deeds in the Great Fire of London and the loss of the remaining early records of the Bank, in 1825, in the fire in the Royal Exchange, it is difficult to trace the occupation of the Grasshopper during the first half of the seventeenth century.
Ground Floor Plan of the new building
It is. however, known that subsequent occupants were Edward Backwell, a prominent goldsmith, from 1662 to 1672: and Charles Buncombe and Richard Kent in 1677. about which time the goldsmiths were beginning to do a regular banking business as we know it. In 1686. Richard Smyth became a partner: so, about 1699, did Andrew Stone. About this time, also, Thomas Martin was engaged as clerk and later became a partner. The present chairman of the London board is a representative of the sixth generation of the family whose name is preserved in the title. Memories of these old associations are incorporated in the new building.
Third and Fourth Floor Plans
On the main front are carved the head of a Lombard, or Italian merchant, typifying the chief financial rivalry with the Jews in the fourteenth century, and the coats of arms of the families of Gresham and Martin. Externally the building is of 2-in. Daneshill bricks with Portland stone dressings and a granite plinth. The lower windows are bronze; the upper, double sashed, are of teak. In fancy the ghosts of buried centuries seem to glide to and fro around the site: of Pepys complaining of the transactions of the "Goldsmiths shops" of speculators in the South Sea bubble, and of Thomas Garraway, who is said to have established here the first teahouse in London.
The following advertisements which relate to the rebuilding of 68 Lombard Street, also appear in the same edition of The Architects’ Journal:
Article text, images and advertisements © The Architects’ Journal 1931 Page design © gut informiert! 2007 to date