Legal Quays and Custom House, south of Lower Thames Street, City of London, 1796

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George Dance office drawings: the drawings of George Dance the Elder and George Dance the Younger
- Town Planning and London Bridge (8)
  - Legal Quays and Custom House, south of Lower Thames Street, City of London, 1796. Preliminary designs and designs, all unexecuted (5)

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Reference number

SM D3/11/4

Purpose

Legal Quays and Custom House, south of Lower Thames Street, City of London, 1796

Aspect

[3] Elevation, approximately 1312 ft long and supported by 45 arches, showing the Monument on the left

Scale

not to scale

Inscribed

(verso, cut) of London / [Leg]al Quays / Elevn to / [sm]all scale / Mr Dance / 121

Signed and dated

1796

Medium and dimensions

Pen, raw umber, sepia and green earth washes, watercolour technique, within single ruled border on laid paper, two sheets joined (265 x 900)

Hand

Dance

Watermark

J Whatman

Notes

Dance has changed the rhythm of the arcaded and rusticated podium from the elevation of [SM D3/11/2] so that the offices flanking the Custom House are of two bays rather than three and the central part of the warehouses has nine instead of seven bays. The pediments over the warehouses, erased and drawn over, have been replaced by shallow hipped roofs, and the Custom House has lost its equestrian statue but two more giant Corinthian columns have been added to the front.

The omission of pediments may owe something to Joseph Farrington who noted (22 May 1796) that Dance 'shewed me his improved designs for new Docks & Warehouses, which I liked much. I gave him my opinion that a long even line of 200 f. interrupted by the Center which rises higher, is preferable to having it broken with pediments; the latter giving a meanness to it. N[athaniel] Dance came in and agreed with me.'

REPRODUCED. Stroud fig.50b.

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.

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