NUMBER 35 DOVER Street in London’s Mayfair houses an art gallery on its ground and first floors. The hallway, where a concierge sits behind a desk has four old stained-glass windows, each of them depicting a lady. They look like Pre-Raphaelite images. The marble floor of the lift is inlaid with brass letters, spelling the word ‘Empress’.

Between 1898 and 1955, number 35 Dover Street was the clubhouse of a women’s club, the Empress Club, which was founded in 1897. It was not the only women’s club in the area (Albemarle Street, Dover Street and Grafton Street), which because of the presence of several clubs for women was known  popularly as ‘Petticoat Alley’. A website about the lost clubs of London (https://clubland.substack.com/p/lost-clubs-the-empress-club-1897) has a page detailing the history of the Empress Club. In late Victorian and Edwardian times, it was Mayfair’s leading women’s social club. Its members were mostly from aristocratic families. The feminist activist Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was a member.

The Empress Club began to decline slowly after WW1. During WW2, its members raised money and collected goods for the troops. In 1941, the club was badly damaged during the Blitz. Although attempts were made to revive the club in 1949, it could only stagger on unsteadily. It became a centre for illegal gambling, and was subject to a police raid in 1955. The website noted:

“In 1955, the Club was raided under the Betting Act, and nine men were arrested for illegal gambling on the premises, including popular comedian Tommy Knox of the ‘Crazy Gang’, who was remanded in custody. Knox was bound over to keep the peace, and the Club’s owners, Empress (Berkeley Square) Hotels, were fined £75. In the aftermath of the raid, and a wave of negative publicity portraying the Club in a seedy light, it dissolved later that year, and the building was sold off.”

In 2022, the building, which was designed by the architects John Thomas Wimperis & William Henry Arber, who were best known for building theatres, was completely refurbished. The people responsible for the refurbishment were architectural interior designer Maison Arabella and Orbit Architects. The gallery, which is housed within it is Lévy Gorvy Dayan, which is currently showing an excellent exhibition about which I will write soon.