Charles Fitzroy Doll

Who was Charles Fitzroy Doll?

Charles Fitzroy Doll J.P., FRIBA, was an English architect of the Victorian and Edwardian eras who specialised in designing hotels. He also designed the dining room on the RMS Titanic, which was based on his design for that in the Hotel Russell in Bloomsbury.

Doll was educated in Germany, and on his return to Britain he trained as an architect under Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt. Under Wyatt he was involved in designing the India Office in London, a project he worked on from 1866 to 1868. In 1885 Doll was appointed Surveyor to the Bedford Estates in Bloomsbury and Covent Garden in London. In 1898 he designed the Hotel Russell, which is distinctively clad in decorative thé-au-lait terracotta, and which was based on the Château de Madrid on the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Doll engaged the sculptor Henry Charles Fehr to model the four life-size statues of British Queens, who look down from above the main front entrance. The hotel's restaurant, now named Fitzroy Doll's, is said to be almost identical to the RMS Titanic`s dining room which he also designed.

Later, Doll designed the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square, and which was described by Pevsner as a ‘vicious mixture of Art Nouveau Gothic and Art Nouveau Tudor’. In 1907 Doll designed the Flemish French-Gothic terrace of shops with apartments over them in Torrington Place.