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A Rather Messy Approach: Understanding the Queen’s Hotel, Birmingham, 1837–1857


 The Queen’s Hotel in Birmingham was one of the world’s most pioneering railway hotels. However, it has particular characteristics that do not readily fit within conventional analyses of architecture: it was not purpose built but was rather the result of a building expansion and modification; it was neither the product of a single architect, nor rooted to a single location. To understand these transitions requires a different approach. This article draws upon current discourses at the nexus of Architectural History and Design History. It is through disciplinary overlap and ‘messiness’ that we can achieve new insights into the development of the Queen’s Hotel during its first two decades. The rapidity of change during this period demonstrates how architecture was striving to keep pace with the progress of the railways. This article brings fresh understanding to the emergence of this particular form of railway hotel—which formed the frontispiece of the station—a typology that would become a dominant feature of Victorian England’s major towns and cities and emblem of the new railway age.