The staircase hall illustrates the original owners love of literary characters to great effect. Access to the first floor appears to be guarded by Thomas Nicholls' resplendent mahogany carvings of the main protagonists in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers perched imperiously atop the seven newel posts of the main staircase.

Panelled in oak, complemented by a chimneypiece in paonazzetto marble and a floor of marble, jasper, porphyry and onyx laid in geometrical patterns, the hall itself is overlooked by a gallery of a further six statues with American literary associations, a frieze in rilievo of eighty-two characters from Shakespeare's Othello, Henry VIII, Antony & Cleopatra and Macbeth and ten pillars of solid ebony.

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