4940 x 3810 px | 41,8 x 32,3 cm | 16,5 x 12,7 inches | 300dpi
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Mansion House is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London in London, England. It is used for some of the City of London's official functions, including an annual dinner, hosted by the Lord Mayor, at which the Chancellor of the Exchequer customarily gives a speech – his "Mansion House Speech" – about the state of the British economy. The Guildhall is another venue used for important City functions. Mansion House was built between 1739 and 1752, in the then fashionable Palladian style by the City of London surveyor and architect George Dance the Elder; its site had formerly been occupied by St Mary Woolchurch Haw, destroyed in the Great Fire of London. The construction was prompted by a wish to put an end to the inconvenient practice of lodging the Lord Mayor in one of the City Halls. Dance won a design competition over solicited designs from James Gibbs and Giacomo Leoni, and uninvited submissions by Batty Langley and Isaac Ware. Mansion House has three main stories over a rusticated basement. The entrance facade features a portico with six Corinthian columns. The building originally had two prominent and unusual attic structures, but these were removed in 1794 and 1843. The building is on a confined site, and in the opinion of Sir John Summerson it gives "an impression of uneasily constricted bulk… On the whole, the building is a striking reminder that good taste was not a universal attribute in the eighteenth century." The main reception room was a colummned hall called the "Egyptian Hall", which was so named because the arrangement of the columns chosen by Dance was deemed to be "Egyptian" by Palladio, rather than because it employed Egyptian motifs. British architecture's mild flirtation with Egyptian motifs lay several decades in the future. The residence is unique in having its own court of law, since the Lord Mayor is the chief magistrate of the City while in office. There are eleven holding cells (ten for men and one, nicknamed
