Interior-general view of Meeting Room

Description Interior-general view of Meeting Room

Date 1903

Collection Records of Bedford Lemere and Company, photographers, London, England

Catalogue Number BL 17780

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 730051, B 64461

Scope and Content Boardroom, Scottish Equitable Life Assurance Company, Nos 27-9 St Andrew Square, Edinburgh The Scottish Equitable Life Assurance Company building was designed in 1897-8 in a Jacobean style on an impressive corner site in Edinburgh's New Town by the architects, John More Dick Peddie & George Washington Browne. The architectural photographer, Harry Bedford Lemere, was commissioned to photograph the interior in 1903. The boardroom, on the first floor, has a compartmentalised plasterwork ceiling and walls lined with a panelled dado. The two-tiered chimneypiece at the far end of the room has Ionic columns supporting the mantelshelf, and a moulded marble surround. An elaborate brass electric light fitting, one of the new technologies of the era, hangs over the table. The company offered life insurance for a small annual premium so that 'a person may, in the event of his premature death, secure a suitable provision for his widow, his children or those dependent on him'. In 1903, an annual payment of £25 by a 29-year-old man would secure £1,000 on death. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Medium Glass

External Reference Box 41

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/329757