members, most of which were transferred from the Thatched House prior to demolition. After Almack's In 1886–7 the business was purchased by a company, Willis's Rooms Limited, and in 1892 the building was considerably altered and the whole of the King Street front was refaced in cement. From 1893 part of the building was occupied by a firm of auctioneers, Messrs. Robinson and Fisher, who later became Messrs Robinson and Foster Ltd and on the ground floor there were shops, often occupied by fine-art dealers. Other parts of the building were occupied by a restaurant and a succession of clubs; from 1915 to 1922 Horatio Bottomley, M.P., had rooms there. The building was destroyed by enemy action on 23 February 1944 in the war of 1939–45; the site is now occupied by a block of offices called Almack House (bearing a brass plaque commemorating the existence of Almack's on that spot), erected in 1949–50. A new social club named "Almack's" was founded in 1904, and was still in existence in 1911. The Building The original building was constructed in the Palladian style, and located on the south side of King Street. Evidence of the appearance of the building is limited. A water-colour view of the exterior indicates it to have been utilitarian, the front of plain brickwork, with the great room expressed by the six round-arched windows of the second storey, and the entrance dressed with a pedimented Ionic doorcase. Two passages penetrated the ground storey, in the east part of which were two shops with a mezzanine over, and at the west end, there were three storeys of accommodation, with a mezzanine over the ground floor. Sources of information about the interior include the view of 'The Ball Room, Willis's Rooms' in Old and New London, and an illustration by Cruikshank in Life in London (1821). The illustration in Old and New London almost certainly shows the great room (described in sources as being one hundred feet in length by forty feet in width, and "one of the most beautiful in London) after its redecoration by Kuckuck in 1860, but under the heavy Victorian overlay can be seen the elegance depicted by Cruikshank. It seems clear, therefore, that the walls were divided into bays by a Composite order, with paired pilasters between the windows or panels of the long side walls, and single columns between the five bays of