Renamed in 2008 as Andaz Liverpool Street London Hotel
Liverpool Street
Londres EC2M 7QN
The old Great Eastern Hotel was built between 1884 and 1887 by Charles Barry, the grandson of Charles Barry, who designed the Houses of Parliament. I knew it all my life when I was traveling to London from Essex and saw the Great Eastern Hotel sign inside Liverpool Street train station when I arrived. It used to be a gloomy place where rooms could be rented by the hour, but I always knew that underneath there was a good building wanting to shine.
The Andaz Liverpool Street London Hotel (formerly Great Eastern Hotel) at Liverpool Street Train Station is a Grade II listed building. It is a Victorian railway hotel that has been restored by Conran & Partners to have a contemporary interior with the integrity of the respected grand building.
Open House London allows us to enter buildings normally closed to the public or see private areas of interesting buildings. The Great Eastern Hotel realized how popular they would be (the line circled Bishopsgate an hour before the tour started) and they organized larger groups and more tours than advertised. The tours were conducted by staff members who had received special training on the history of the building and were really excited about what they had to tell us.
The organizers had also arranged for two members of the Manser Practice architectural team to explain the problems they had to overcome with the buildings. They had a scale model so they could remove parts of the old building and add new parts, just as they had to do with the hotel.
The hotel closed in September 1997 for renovation to begin, and by November 2000 it was open for guests. £ 70 million was spent on renovating the hotel.
Plumbing and bedroom problems
The Great Eastern Hotel originally had 160 rooms, but only 12 had baths and the trains brought salt water from Harwich on the Essex coast to the hotel baths. In 2006, the hotel had 267 rooms, all of which are obviously en-suite.
It couldn’t be excavated under the hotel due to the subway lines running directly below so instead of having sewer drains for the toilets they use vacuum drainage. When you flush the toilet at the Great Eastern Hotel, the waste is sucked up, not down, and through the ceiling to exit the building!
We visited two guest suites. The first one costs £ 630 + VAT. There was a huge 2 square meter bed, but I must say that the area of the room was not huge, but this is obviously due to the limitations of a Victorian building. However, there was an additional office room with a work area, as well as a sofa and table for a reception / meeting space. The wall decoration was a huge contemporary photographic work of a woman and a tiger. I’m not sure how well I would sleep with that in the bedroom …
The room next door was only £ 455 + VAT and it wasn’t much different. I found it strange that there were steps to enter the rooms from the corridor, but this must also be due to the original layout of the building.
Masonic temple
Interestingly, inside a hotel in central London, there is a Greek masonic temple with grade II marble and mahogany. There are 12 types of marble in the temple, all from Italy, and the grandiose throne-type chairs are made of heavy mahogany. The temple was built in 1912 and cost £ 50,000 at the time, which is equivalent to £ 4 million today.
When the hotel was sold for renovation, it was so run-down that the previous owners had never discovered the temple, as it was located behind a false wall. Many believe that Jack the Ripper was a Mason and if so, he would have attended this temple as it is closer to his hunting ground. Although the temple is inside the hotel, the hotel owners do not have rights to the use of the temple. That honor belongs to the Freemasons, but the temple was briefly used as the staff canteen during construction work!
As we left the hotel, we went down a large marble staircase, which we were told was so dirty that everyone thought it was made of wood.
The last stop on the tour was the George Pub, which is decorated in the style of an Elizabethan-Jacobin coach. If you’re stopping for a drink, take a look at the painting behind the 1620 bar that now has two holes where a ladder leaned against it.
