M14| Friday, February 21, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Leinster
Square
curved sash windows and wooden
shutters are the originals. The
floors are either oak parquet or
thickly carpeted, while slabs of
veined Carrara marble have been
used for work tops and back
splashes in the kitchens.
In the model apartments, the
décor reflects Mr. Mapelli Mozzi’s
own taste. There is original art-
work on the walls and vintage fur-
niture by an international roll call
of designers including PierrePrincess Beatrice and Mr. Mapelli
Mozzi, above, are due to wed on
May 29th.Banda’s
renovation of
the property in
Leinster
Square
reinvigorates a
once-affluent
community
that had fallen
into disrepair in
the late-1800s
and only
recently began
to recover.Adiningroomfeaturingchairs
bytheSwissmodernistarchitect
anddesignerPierreJeanneret.Jeanneret and Joaquim Tenreiro
alongside modern items. He par-
ticularly admires a Picasso print
and a 15th-century urn covered in
barnacles picked up from a gallery
in Copenhagen. “It looks like you
are walking into a collector’s
home not a model apartment,” he
said. The furnishings and art in
the model apartments can be pur-
chased under separate agreement.
Showings of the homes began
at the end of 2019. In January, Mr.
Mapelli Mozzi says three units
were reserved with a $19,535 de-
posit each. He believes this is a
sign of renewed confidence in U.K.
property now that the Brexit im-
passe has been resolved. “A lot of
the excuses people put in front of
them are now gone,” he said.
Mr. Mapelli Mozzi is happy to
discuss topics like the British
Prime Minister Boris Johnson or
the best way to cut and transport
marble. But just a mention of his
forthcoming wedding causes a
visible flush and a rapid change of
subject: Even though he’s not yet
a member of the royal family, this
is one royal spouse-to-be with no
desire to rock the boat.ings were abandoned and decrepit.
Most of the original features—
elaborate plasterwork and fire-
places—were lost.
This was oddly convenient.
With no historic fabric to protect,
Westminster Council, the local au-
thority, granted building permits
for Mr. Mapelli Mozzi to scoop
out the insides of the houses like
a boiled egg, leaving only their
fancy facades and rear walls
standing. The interiors could then
be rebuilt, reconfigured into 15
large apartments.
Work began in early 2017. Mr.
Mapelli Mozzi estimates the cost
of the three-year project at
around $781 a square foot. The
smallest property at Leinster
Square measures 2,302 square
feet, with three bathrooms and
three bedrooms. It is listed for
$7.684 million. The largest has
4,567 square feet of living space
on three levels, with six bedrooms
and five bathrooms. It is listed for
$14.845 million.
The apartments have ceilings
up to 11 feet high. Original his-
toric details like plasterwork have
been re-created, although theBANDA (3); FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (PRINCESS BEATRICE AND EDO MAPELLI MOZZI); JASON LEE (MAP)
The sitting room in the model apartment, above, features a portrait of Lady Harlech by British fashion
photographer Nick Knight.2,705squarefeet
3bedrooms
3bathroomsKensington
Gardens and
Hyde ParkBAYSWATER
Leinster
SquareLONDON
LONDONlower price.
Wyatt was initially successful in
selling the townhouses, but by the
end of the 19th century, the Bay-
swater experiment was flagging.
The neighborhood’s character de-
clined and air pollution from
nearby Paddington Station, which
opened in 1854, eventually dealt
the death blow. The homes fell into
disrepair. It was only recently, with
the announcement of a new train
line linking the area to Heathrow
Airport and central London, that
its fortunes turned.
When Mr. Mapelli Mozzi set up
Banda, he knew that, as a bou-
tique developer, he needed a
niche. It was 2007, he was 23, and
London’s market was still flying.
“There were all these peo-
ple who could finally
sell their big houses,
and they wanted
lateral living with
large entertain-
ing spaces, and
nothing like that
actually existed
on the market,”
he said about the
big, single-level
apartments that are
rare in London.
He began buying up and con-
verting commercial premises, in-
cluding a Victorian bakery and an
Art Deco garage, into homes aimed
at cash-rich downsizers. To date,
Banda reports that it has developed
more than 40 sites with a total
value of more than $781.4 million.
Mr. Mapelli Mozzi bought seven
interconnected Leinster Square
townhouses in 2015 for an undis-
closed sum. They were listed at the
time for $65.1 million. They had
been converted into a hotel in the
1970s, but after it closed the build-job as senior partner of Banda, the
company he set up fresh out of the
University of Edinburgh, where he
studied politics. The firm is putting
the finishing touches on 13-19 Lein-
ster Square, a row of 170-year-old
townhouses it renovated and con-
verted into grand apartments.
“I have always been obsessed by
property,” said Mr. Mapelli Mozzi.
“My mother was in commercial
real estate and I spent my youth
being dragged around looking at
sites. I was also interested
in art, and design, and
we moved house a
lot. It all just came
together.”
According to
the Leinster
Square Gardens
Association, a
group run by local
residents, the
Square was origi-
nally the work of
George Wyatt, the
son of a well-known
property developer.
He and other developers work-
ing nearby planned to tempt mid-
dle-class families from London’s
more traditional upscale neighbor-
hoods to Bayswater, where Leinster
Square is located. During the 19th
century, they built grand town-
houses, often clad in white plaster
and decorated with classical col-
umns and iron balconies—the same
sort of homes in more fashionable
nearby neighborhoods like Belgra-
via and Knightsbridge, but at a
Continued from page M1
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