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Hutcheson Bridge, Glasgow: designs for a bridge, 1793, unexecuted (4)

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In 1793, the Adam office made a design for a new bridge over the River Clyde to connect Salt Market Street to Crown Street. These designs have been attributed to James Adam, as they are dated after Robert Adam’s death. The designs were unexecuted, however, Adam’s cousin who was also a clerk and draughtsman in the Adam office, John Robertson, did start constructing a bridge there in 1794. The bridge unfortunately collapsed before it was completed due to a large flood in 1795. It is not clear if the collapsed bridge was built to the Adam office design or an alternative by Robertson.

A new timber bridge was built instead in 1803 to the designs of Peter Nicholson and replaced by a stone bridge in 1824-5 by the engineer Robert Stevenson. This bridge was replaced by the existing Albert Bridge in 1871 to the designs of Bell & Miller.

Literature: A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, Index, 1922, p. 14; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 2, 2001, p. 56; A. A. Tait, Robert Adam, The Creative Mind: from the sketch to the finished drawing, 1996, p. 42; Historic Environment Scotland, ‘Glasgow, Hutchesontown, Former Bridges’, Canmore, online [accessed 16 October 2023]

Louisa Catt, 2023

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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.

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Contents of Hutcheson Bridge, Glasgow: designs for a bridge, 1793, unexecuted (4)