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  • image SM Adam volume 1/167
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 1/167

Purpose

[7] Preliminary design for the east front of additions to the College of Justice, 1790-91, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of the east front comprising the existing College of Justice and Robert Adam’s proposed additions. In the foreground is the old Parliament House, a two-storey building with a hipped roof, decorative balustrade, and corner bartizan, and a turret with an ogee-shaped conical roof. Two different porticos appear to have been added to the building front, one comprises a small three-bay portico with an opening within a pedimented surround above and acroteria, the other a larger pedimented portico, with a single bay of windows to the right. Abutting the right of the building is a three-storey octagonal tower comprising three bays articulated by columns, the third floor has a Venetian window in the central bay flanked by arched windows with modillions above. Projecting from the top is a sketch of a taller tower with a domed roof and finial

Scale

to a rough scale

Signed and dated

  • 1790-91
    datable to 1790-91

Medium and dimensions

Pencil on laid paper (192x210)

Hand

Possibly
Robert Adam

Watermark

cartouche surmounted by a fleur de lis

Notes

The corner bartizan, decorative balustrade, and turret were part of the existing College of Justice building. Adam’s proposed additions to this, at this stage, appear to be only the portico and windows. The concept of the smaller portico with acroteria is repeated in an alternate design, SM Adam 33/02.

Literature

Bolton, 1922, p. 11
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

Level

Drawing

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).