Palace Court was built in the 1880s to connect the Bayswater Road to Moscow Road.
Some houses were built in Palace Court in 1889 and flats called Palace Court Mansions were inhabited from 1890.
Many original Palace Court residents had ’aesthetic tastes’. They included Wilfrid Meynell and his wife Alice, the poet (1847-1922), the artist George William Joy (d. 1925), and the furniture expert Percy McQuoid (d. 1925).
Palace Court has been described as ’the most interesting place in the borough for late Victorian domestic architecture’.
At the south-east corner King’s Fund college occupies no. 2, in red brick and terracotta by William Flockhart, dated 1891. Similarly florid buildings stand next to it in Bayswater Road, although originally numbered with Palace Court, and include the yellow terracotta Westland hotel, formerly the Yellow House, no. 8, designed by George & Peto for Percy McQuoid.
Set back from the east side of Palace Court are nos. 10, 12, and 14, the first two forming a pair designed by J. M. Maclaren with an elaborate stone frieze and an unusual bow window divided by rounded shafts. The west side of the road is more coherent, consisting mainly of houses of five storeys and basement, all in red brick with stone dressings and many with Dutch gables. They form a terrace, although some were individually planned. No. 45, formerly Palace Court House, was designed by Leonard Stokes for Wilfrid and Alice Meynell in 1889 and soon attracted architectural students; it has bands of brick and stone, small windows, and a first-floor bay. No. 51, the Red Lodge, was built in 1889 for G. W. Joy.
