New designs for the Home Office, 1827 (2)

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / New designs for the Home Office, 1827 (2)

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Office of Works
  - London: Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices, Whitehall & Downing Street: designs for new offices and scheme for the improvement of Downing Street, 1823-33 (284)
    - Designs for the new government buildings on Whitehall and the completion of Downing Street with a Triumphal Arch, December 1825-May 1833 (100)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM (264) 49/5/7 (265) 49/5/6

Purpose

New designs for the Home Office, 1827 (2)

Aspect

264 Front elevation, plans of front at ground floor and attic level and section through front 265 Front elevation, plan of front, Elevation of / end A and Section thro Doorway

Scale

(264) bar scale of 1/6 inch to 1 foot (265) bar scale of 1/12 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

264 A Design for rebuilding the Front of the Offices of the Secretary of State for the Home Department and to unite it with the New Buildings / for the Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices 265 Design for the New front to the "Home Department", labelled: A, C, The blue tint shews / the line of the upper / order, Pilaster (twice), Pilaster C on Plan, Column (3 times), Column B, Pilaster lower diam[ete]^r of Column B

Signed and dated

(264) 1827

Medium and dimensions

(264) Pen, sepia, pink and blue washes, pricked for transfer on two sheets of wove paper, affixed (436 x 530) (265) pen, sepia, pink and blue washes, (verso) pencil, pricked for transfer on wove paper (305 x 360)

Hand

(264, 265) George Bailey (1792-1860, pupil then assistant 1806-37, curator 1837-60)

Notes

Drawings 264 and 265 show two variations on an alternative design by Soane for the rebuilding of the Home Office. The intention, presumably, was to remedy the problem of the encroachment of the north pavilion into the street - in these designs, the frontage to the Home Office is set at a slight angle from the Board of Trade to return onto Whitehall.
In the first variation (drawing 264) the Home Office is the same height as the Board of Trade Offices to the top of the attic. The entablature is broken and supported by clusters of fluted columns and pilasters. The second variation has a much taller attic - actually a complete upper storey - and is capped with a balustrade. The entablature is decorated with six sculptures and the ground floor columns and pilasters are repeated on the upper storey.
A composite drawing of views of the new Treasury Offices by Joseph Gandy (1771-1843) shows the Home Office to the design of drawing 264 (q.v. drawing 281).
The verso of drawing 264 has a design for a new royal entrance to the House of Lords (q.v. Soane: Office of Works: London: Palace of Westminster: House of Lords: Designs for a new entrance to the House of Lords). On the verso of drawing 265 are the beginnings of a pencil perspective of the design for the new Home Office from the south east.

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).