Designs for the frontage of the new buildings including the Home Office, March 1825 (4)

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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 Board of Trade and Privy Council Offices and preliminary designs for the new Home Office, January-September 1825 (60)

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Reference number

SM (152) 49/3/38 (153) 49/3/37 (154) 49/3/36 (155) 49/3/35

Purpose

Designs for the frontage of the new buildings including the Home Office, March 1825 (4)

Aspect

152 Front elevation 153 Front elevation 154 Front elevation 155 Front elevation; (verso) rough preliminary drawing for a perspective of the Commissioners' new churches

Inscribed

152 Downing Street / 7' March 1825 Taken to The Chancellor of the Exchequer / Mr Herries / Surveyor Gen[era]l, Directed to continue this part and the return up Downing Street / with as much expedition as possible, Altered agreeably to the directions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, labelled (pencil): 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 153 Balustrade / added July 1824 155 Copy dated 7 March 1825, (pencil) Copy date 7 March 1825

Signed and dated

(152) 7 March 1825 (154) as above ('Copy dated 7 March 1825')

Medium and dimensions

(152-155) Pencil, sepia and black washes on wove paper (312 x 537, 311 x 562, 312 x 560, 311 x 562)

Hand

(152-155) Edward Davis (1802-52, pupil 1824-26)

Watermark

(152) Smith & Allnutt 1820 (154) 1821

Notes

At some point in early 1825 it was decided to include the Home Office in the rebuilding of the offices on Whitehall and Soane was directed to incorporate this into the new building. The former Home Office had been located in the Old Tennis Court building to the north of the Treasury Passage (q.v. drawing 5).
Drawings 152-155 show Soane's initial designs for extending the Board of Trade building further northwards along Whitehall to Dover House, now (2013) the Scotland Office, which can be seen to the right of drawing 152. The new designs are for a 23-bay building with two entrances. Drawing 152, which was 'taken to the Chancellor of the Exchequer [and] Mr Herries', shows four alternative designs for the attic storey. Drawing 155 is a copy of drawing 154.
According to a note on drawing 152, Soane was directed to continue the part of the building containing the Privy Council Offices and 'the return up Downing Street with as much expedition as possible.'
On the verso of drawing 155 is a very rough preliminary drawing by Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843) for a perspective of one of the new Commissioners' churches.

Level

Drawing

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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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