Presentation drawing of the library, as built by Robert Taylor 1770-74

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Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1352)
    - 1791-1801 Rebuilding of offices in the east wing and north-east extension (430)
      - Library, November 1797 -1799 (14)

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Reference number

SM (1) 1/2/10

Purpose

Presentation drawing of the library, as built by Robert Taylor 1770-74

Aspect

1 Elevation, section and plan of the library

Scale

To a scale

Inscribed

dimensions given

Signed and dated

1770-74

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey and yellow washes within single ruled border on laid paper (501 x 325)

Hand

Taylor office

Watermark

crowned fleur-de-lis and LVG below

Notes

Robert Taylor built the Library in 1770. The brick structure consisted of four storeys and seven equidistant bays with clerestory thermal windows on the north elevation. Supporting square piers supported cross-vaults. A semicircular stairwell joined the east side of the building. Taylor's library was built as a fire-proof storage for archives.

The dimensions appear to have been added later, as their informal hand and placement does not tally with the well executed drawing and border.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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).