Pitt Club - Clubhouse

Clubhouse

The Club was a peripatetic organisation during its first few years, meeting variously in the rooms of members and in other venues. In 1841, it acquired rooms over the shop of Mr Richard Hutt, bookseller, at 29 Trinity Street, which it occupied until 1843. From 1843 until 1866, the Pitt Club's rooms were located over the furniture shop of a Mr Metcalfe at 74 Bridge Street, on the corner of All Saints’ Passage.

Since 1866, the Club's premises have been at 7a Jesus Lane. The building was originally designed in 1863 as Victorian Roman Baths by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt. The baths were an extremely short-lived venture, opening in late February 1863 and closing by December of that year. After the closure, a liquidation sale ensued, and the building was auctioned off in 1865, being bought by its own architect, Wyatt, for £2,700. He rented out half of the building to the Pitt Club, and the other half to Orme's Billiards Rooms.

In 1907, the Club bought the entire building. Following a fire in the same year, the interior of the Club was extensively renovated. There were further renovations in 1925, and the dining room was paneled in 1927.

The large plaque of Pitt’s head that adorns the pediment over the entrance to the Club was presented in February 1933 by General Sir Neill Malcolm. It had formerly been on a wall at Bowling-Green House in Putney, Pitt's place of death, which was pulled down in 1932.

For most of the century after its purchase of 7a Jesus Lane, the Club occupied the whole of the prominent neo-classical building. The clubhouse was designated a Grade II listed building in 1950. As the Club went through mounting financial difficulties in the 1990s, it sold a 25-year leasehold on the ground floor of its building to the Pizza Express chain in October 1997. Since then, the Club has occupied the first floor of the building, with the entire ground floor now taken up by the restaurant.

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