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  • image SM Adam volume 38/45

Reference number

SM Adam volume 38/45

Purpose

[16] Design for a block of ten terraced houses on the north side of the street, 1785

Aspect

Plan of the principal (first) storey and elevation of the principal façade of a block of ten four-storey terraced houses, with a rusticated basement, convex façade, and a pitched roof. With shop windows within relieving arches on the ground storey, surmounted by front doors and windows behind an arcade, and above the windows and half-height windows of the second and third storeys are largely behind a balustraded lotus capital colonnade, with occasional bays projecting out to the level of the colonnade, and with the central nine bays projecting to form a central block, with small pedimented attics in the first and last bays of this block, and to either side of this are roof-line sculptures – a unicorn to the left, and a lion to the right – and the block is terminated at each end by a three-bay bow

Scale

bar scale of 7/10 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

South East front of an Ornamented Design for ten Houses proposed to be built in Leith Street with a Terrace & Shops under it / at Edinburgh (in the hand of William Adam) / Parlor / Stair / Water Closet / Back Stairs / Gentlemans dressing Room / Eating Room / Passage / Area / Eating Room / Stair / Parlor / Hall / Eating Room / Parlor / Dressing room / Stair / Area / Hall / Butlers Room / Stairs / Gentleman’s dressing room / Anti room / Eating Room / Passage / a fair copy of this / sent to Edinr 12t. July 1785 and some measurements given

Signed and dated

  • 1785
    datable to 1785

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (734 x 507)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison, with addition to title inscription in the hand of William Adam

Watermark

JWHATMAN and fleur de lis within crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, p. 233, Index p. 11
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 76
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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).