More information : (SE 16783309-OS 1/2500,1969)
5111 VICAR LANE BD1 (south-east side)
No 62 (Devere House)
SE 1633 SE 37/1150
Grade II*
Includes No 1 Aked Street. Built in 1871 as an American and
Chinese Export Warehouse. Architects Lockwood and Mawson and,
with No 63 opposite, their major incursion into the precinct
which is otherwise dominated by Eli Milnes. No 62 is a grand
commercial palazzo with richly modelled yet carefully
proportioned elevations, forming a corner block with Aked Street.
Tall dressed sandstone "brick" elevations with ashlar dressings
of 5 graded storeys. Seven bays to Vicar Lane, one to splayed
corner and 2 to Aked Street with No 1 extending the block in
plainer style. The ground floor is arcaded. The piers have
battered moulded bases treated as plinth with vermiculated
courses, Greek key bands and weathered capping string. Similar
string at impost level. Vermiculated console keystones. Blind
basement windows with console keys supporting window sills above.
Console bracket cornice over ground floor serving as sill course
to first floor which is treated as piano nobile. The close set
windows have blind baluster panels below sills and are flanked
by panelled foliate capped pilasters supporting archivolt
arches, carved spandrels and modillioned pediments over.
Lentilled sill course to second floor with arcaded windows linked
by acathus leaf impost string, carved tympani, archivolt arches.
Similar details to third floor with incised roundels to
spandrels. The fourth floor windows have segmental arched eared
architrave surrounds. Bed mould to carved console brackets
supporting projecting eaves cornice. Office entrance on corner,
elaborately decorated with flanking panels carved with vine
leaves and surmounted by massive consoles supporting large
segmental pediment with carved scrollwork. This surround
contains the door proper, flanked by Corinthian columns, large
vermiculated voussoirs to blind tympanum containing a boldly
carved eagle: festoons are carried across from the consoles of
the surround. The waggonway is contained in the wider end bay of
the ground floor arcade. The blind basement windows are screened
by fine wrought iron grilles of wheel and scroll pattern. Inside,
behind corner entrance is the stairwell, octagonal in plan
with moulded soffits to treads, cast iron columnar banisters and
swept and ramped handrail. (1)
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