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Original Text (Annotation: EAW000649 / 2067835)

' The former Imperial Hotel. Designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll (who also designed the dining room on the RMS Titanic, and the neighbouring Hotel Russell). It was sadly demolished in 1966 and replaced with a new hotel of the same name. “The Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1966, partly because of its lack of bathrooms, and partly because, in the words of the G.L.C., ‘the whole frame….was so structurally unsound that there was no possibility of saving it if a preservation order had been placed on the building.’ It may have been a victim, too, of the time-lag in official taste – it is interesting to see that in 1970-1 the owners of the Russell Hotel, a similar but less extravagant terracotta building designed by Doll in 1898, now on the statutory list of historic buildings, are spending £1 million on restoration, rather than just demolishing and rebuilding.” Taken from 'Lost London' by Hermione Hobhouse, 1971. '