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  • image SM Adam volume 31/14
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Reference number

SM Adam volume 31/14

Purpose

[25] Finished drawing for the library, c1788, unexecuted

Aspect

Elevation of a two-and-a-half-storey, nine-bay building with a balustraded, hipped roof, surmounted by a drum supporting statuary and a spire surmounted by a weather vane. The spire contains a clock with a broken pediment, with a tier set behind an Ionic screen and an additional balustraded tier above. The central five bays of the building form a bow, with an arcade containing a stepped entrance at the ground-storey level. At the first-storey level there are full-height windows set behind a balustraded Corinthian colonnade. There are quarter-height windows in the upper register. The bow front is flanked by projecting, two-and-a-half-storey pavilions with balustraded, pyramidal roofs. At the ground-storey level there are three-quarter-height, tripartite windows, with balustraded Venetian windows above. In the upper register there are quarter-height, tripartite windows. The central building is flanked by two-storey, single-bay, curved link blocks surmounted by sphinxes. At the ground-storey level there are stepped, semi-circular-headed entrances, with colonnaded Tuscan windows above. The link bays connect to flanking two-storey, nine-bay buildings with balustraded, hipped roofs surmounted by stepped domes containing oculi. There are central, stepped entrances set within pedimented Corinthian porticos. At the ground-storey level there are full-height windows, with semi-circular-headed, balustraded windows at the first-storey level, and the windows are flanked by giant Corinthian pilasters

Scale

bar scale of 3/4 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Design of a new Library for the University of Cambridge Shewing the front of the present Senate House to the right with the addition of a Dome and some other alterations with a / corresponding Wing to the left containing a Register Office, Consistory, Librarians rooms & with Corridores of Communication between the centre Building and the Wings, there are three / Schools intended on the Ground Story under the new Library with a Printing Office and other conveniencys. The Spire is placed upon the Octagon in the center of the Building (all underwritten in pencil) / Extends 368 Feet / No. 24 (pencil) and some dimensions given

Signed and dated

  • c1788
    c1788

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash within a single ruled border on laid paper (742 x 491)

Hand

Possibly
Office hand, possibly Robert Morison

Verso

4 / 4

Watermark

Fleur-de-lis within a crowned cartouche / JWHATMAN

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, pp. 173-79; Index, p. 6
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 54
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).