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Westminster
£50,000 to £99,999
The Beefsteak Club is an exclusive gentleman’s lunch-time dining club housed in premises off Leicester Square. The main dining room features an Arts and Crafts truss roof, a bay window overlooking the main street below, and a fine panelled antechamber, but the experience of using the club had been spoiled by the ancillary spaces: a dull shared staircase led via a nondescript door into a corridor serving the outdated office and toilet facilities. We were commissioned to improve these facilities and to adapt a service staircase to provide a new entrance to the club while the club took its summer break. The ancillary spaces were refurbished in appropriate style and the corridor improved, but the pièce de résistance was the installation of the staircase from a new entrance door near ground level up to the club rooms. We created a semi-circular rear wall, with niches, which allows the staircase to wind gently. There is trompe-l’oeil dado panelling, a mahogany handrail, and an octagonal rooflight over. Cartoons by Spy of former illustrious members line the walls.