The building - current headquarters of the "Mutua General de Seguros" - was built between 1894-1896 as a representative and office building for the Company of Gas Lebon following a project by the architect Francesc de Paula Villar i Carmona.

The plot is part of a unique double block delimited by Carrer d'Aribau, Diputació, Balmes and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, mostly occupied by the large building of the University of Barcelona.

It is a quadrangular building that sits on a rectangular plot, much of which was originally intended for a garden and is currently used as a car park. One of the most relevant aspects of this building and what makes it one of the most outstanding constructions of the end of the 19th century in Barcelona is precisely the originality of the project. We are referring to the fact that it looks like an exempt building despite being the head of a continuous band of buildings aligned on Carrer de Balmes. The architect achieved this effect by attaching the building to the middle of Carrer de Balmes, but opening its main façade towards the garden which was accessed from the Gran Via.

The building consists of five levels of height clearly differentiated into three bodies. The lower one, almost like a base, has a very different material treatment from the rest of the façade. Made with stone blocks arranged in regular rows, it has two levels, a lower one where the current entrance to the Mutua is located (on Carrer de Balmes). Above this lower level there is a second floor, which opens to a series of low arches that give it the appearance of a gallery or very diaphanous body. However, this second level gains prominence in the area of the old garden where the main entrance was located. On this front, a monumental staircase with a stone railing gives access to the interior of the building through the second level. This entrance is also protected from atmospheric agents such as sun or rain through the overhang of the balcony that develops on the main floor.

Regarding the rest of the façade, the homogeneity of elements and composition on the three fronts should be highlighted. In this sense, on top of the stone base, where the openings of the two interior levels are framed, the body of the façade is properly developed. Separated from the lower one by a running cornice, this becomes more prominent in the corners, where the towers develop, becoming an overhang that forms the base of the tribunes on the main floor. These tribunes are configured as a rectangular element resting on sculpted corbels, with a stone railing and Ionic columns that support an entablature that is the base of the balcony developed on the second floor.

The windows on the main floor are framed by Ionic pilasters that incorporate several diamond-pointed ashlars into the shaft and that become the only ornamental element apart from the smooth entablature that crowns them.

On the second floor, on the other hand, the windows – although they keep the same type of pilaster – are configured as a spandrel balcony and are finished with semicircular pediments that contrast with the mouldings on the top floor.

The building is finished with a powerful cornice to which circular openings open in the form of portholes sculpted with floral decoration and which coincide with the vertical axis on which the windows are arranged. Above the cornice there is a last floor with mansards and a roof on a slope which is the result of a later work.

As for the corner towers, as already mentioned, they present one more level than the rest of the façade, in which a kind of open gallery develops through a triple opening with arch and central pillar. The towers are covered with a false mansard roof that is topped with a flat roof with an iron railing.

Unlike the base level made of stone, in the rest of the façade the predominant material is brick, arranged in horizontal strips and which contrasts with the whiteness of the artificial stone of the mullions and lintels of the windows.

The building was designed by the architect Francesc de Paula Villar i Carmona in 1894 on behalf of the company Gas Lebón – one of the pioneers in the state in the production and marketing of gas for public and private lighting of the city.

The original project did not foresee the mansards, which are an added element that considerably modified the perception of the façade, as it visually narrows the angular turrets and reduces the verticality of the whole in general.