Symbolic capital: the London and Westminster Bank headquarters, 1836-38

This paper develops the theme of architecture as symbolic capital, by presenting a detailed story of the design, building and reaction to the London and Westminster Bank's new headquarters in the early 19th-century City of London. In developing a detailed contextual account of the place of this banking institution within the City's changing urban landscape, the paper points to the specific ways in which the architecture of its new headquarters symbolized a struggle for recognition within a hostile and private world. A subtext to the main narrative suggests that the aesthetics of this new bank building played a deeper ideological role too, negotiating the complex and inherently unstable qualities of money itself.