History notes: The Goldbeaters’ Building, Whitfield Street

This striking-looking early 20th century building at 54-60 Whitfield Street was purpose-built for several firms of gold beaters.

It was completed in 1919 to a design by architect Ernest H Abbott and is regarded as a good example of industrial architecture of the period.

Featuring prominent brick columns topped with two curving dentilled pediments, it has four “arm and hammer” mouldings, leaving a clue to the building’s previous use.

Gold beaters were on Whitfield Street in a number of buildings from the 1860s until, possibly, the early 1960s.

One of the firms at number 54-60 was George M Whiley & Co, a specialist producer which had a workshop in the street since 1896. The company is now known as API Foilmakers and its history page has an archive photo showing an elaborate hanging sign and an arm and hammer that once featured on the frontage.

The building now houses the Doctors Laboratory, an independent provider of clinical laboratory diagnostic services.

Towards the end of the last century it was under threat of demolition to make way for a block of luxury flats.

“The building has an imposing presence in Whitfield Street; it is an asset to the streetscape and part of local history,” wrote Bertie Dinnage of the Charlotte Street Association in December 1997 in an article for The Fitzrovia News.

“It is hoped that the Goldbeaters Building will be protected by the Camden Council policy of retaining workshop accommodation in Fitzrovia for light industrial uses,” he wrote.

Until 1870 this section of Whitfield Street between Windmill Street and Howland Street went under the name of John Street. The street was originally laid out from around 1770.

In the book Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia Through Time (2012) there is a photo taken in 1905 of this part of the street showing its original modest houses, shops, and workshops including a gold beaters’, and an unpaved road surface described as “quagmire-like”.

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