London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Gower Street, London

A competition to design a new building to be sited in Gower Street was held involving five architects, all experienced in laboratory design and construction. This was won in July 1925 by Morley Horder (and Verner Rees?) who located the main entrance in Keppel Street. Minimally decorated classical or Neo-Georgian facade of four storeys in meticulously cut Portland stone. Austerely detailed, with large wreaths and names of medical scientists in relief. The iron balconies have delicately gilded tropical flora and fauna.[16] The building was opened in 1929 by the Prince of Wales. The purchase of the site and the cost of a new building was made possible through a gift of $2m from the Rockefeller Foundation. Gilded Vectors of Disease - on balcony - designed by Morley Horder.

SCHOOL OF HYGIENE'S NEW BUILDING - In order to obtain designs for the permanent quarters of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to be erected on the site adjoining Keppel Street, Gower  Street, and Malet Street, near the British Museum, the Board of Management of the school in December last instituted a competition limited to five architects who have specialized in the planning and equipment of the type of building required, and appointed Sir Frank Baines, Director of Works at H.M. Office of Works, as assessor. Funds for the erection of the new building are being provided by the Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation, who offered the British Government nearly half a million sterling for site, building, and equipment. The Board of Management of the school, under the chairmanship of Sir Alfred Mond, M.P. has unanimously adopted the assessor's award in favour of the design submitted by Mr. P. Morley Horder, who will be appointed architect for the new building.  [Times 1 July 1925 page 11]

LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGENE - The new building of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, for which a generous grant was made by the Rockefeller Trustees, will be opened by the Prince of Wales on Thursday. It is a building of the severely modern type, varying from five to six storeys in height, and occupying a site of 300 feet by 180 feet, with frontages to Gower Street, Keppel Street, and Malet Street. The block plan is H-shaped, permitting of north and south courts and dividing the structure into two main divisions. One of the divisions comprises all the rooms required for public use, such as museum, library, and lecture theatre. and the other the accommodation for research and teaching departments, including a series of big and little laboratories, some able to take 80 students, workshops, and animal quarters. The exterior facades are in Portland stone and the courtyard walls in London stock brick. The Kepel Street facade, which overlooks a part of the British Museum, forms the front of the institution, and across it, high up, runs a frieze bearing the names of early pioneers in hygiene and tropical medicine. Balconies of first-floor windows are decorated by gilded bronze insects, typifying the carriers of tropical diseases, and over the main entrance has been carved an adaptation, from the school seal, representing a Greek coin engraved with the figures of Phoebus and Diana, bringing light and health to the distressed inhabitants of a malaria-ridden town in Sicily. Apart from these features, the only attempts at ornament are in the public rooms, noticeably in the extensive library panelled in oak, with a door of ebonized mahogany, the work of the Chiswick Guild. Over the doorway is an design in relief, which is intended to symbolize the work of the school— on the one side the figure of motherhood protecting the infant, and on the other a figure fighting disease in the form of a reptile.The flooring of public rooms and administrative offices on the ground level is of cork, and teak blocks provide the flooring of laboratories and corridors. Heating coils embedded in the ceilings take the place of the usual steam radiators, and generous space has been provided in the proportion of 1 sq. ft. to 5sq. ft. of floor except in the laboratories, where the provision is 1 sq. ft. to every 3 sq. ft. of floor space. The architects were Mr P Morley Horder and Mr Vener O. Rees. [Times 16 July 1929 page 9]