Interior view

Barry successfully employed the astylar Italian palazzo form in his urban designs, notably the Reform Club (completed 1841), Pall Mall, London, the select competition that he won in 1837, the immediate forerunner of which was the Manchester Athenaeum (1836-39), and Bridgewater House (c. 1841-51), St James’s, London, for Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere. Initially the Reform Club was designed around an open cortile, but once the commission was his it became enclosed.

Barry was a refined eclectic whose work spans the late Georgian and early Victorian periods, his best work being Georgian rather than Victorian in spirit. While he was often eager to use new materials and technology, as at the Reform Club and Houses of Parliament, at heart Barry most admired the architectural ideals of ancient Greece.