Presentation design for new government offices, March 1825

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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 (166) 49/3/42

Purpose

Presentation design for new government offices, March 1825

Aspect

166 Front elevation and plan of the front with letter from B. C. Stephenson affixed

Scale

bar scale of 1/12 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

labelled: Passage to Treasury, (letter) My Dear Sir // I transmit you herewith a Plan with / two Drawings for the Buildings of the / Board of Trade, Council Office, &^c / with the signatures of Lord Liverpool & / M^r Robinson, to the One they have / approved of, & which I will thank you / to return one (I mean the approved Plan) / when you can share it. I wish to / have an Opportunity of consulting with / you upon the Agreements to be entered into / for the execution of this Work, and / particularly in respect to the / Foundations for these Buildings / which you will of course be anxious / to commence upon as soon as possible // Believe me / Y^rs very faithfully / B C Stephenson // John Soane E^sq

Signed and dated

Lincolns Inn Fields / March 1825 and letter dated Office of Works / 20^th April 1825

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, pink, blue and green washes, pricked for transfer with quadruple ruled, sepia and black wash border on wove paper (535 x 744); (letter) pen on laid paper with three fold marks (185 x 118)

Hand

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

Watermark

Smith & Allnutt 182- (obscured by letter)

Notes

Drawing 166 seems to be a presentation drawing, judging by its neatness and border. The two pavilions project 6 feet from the main front of the building.
The drawing was returned to Soane by B. C. Stephenson (c.1766-1839), the Surveyor General of the Office of Works. A proposal from Johnson & Co. for laying the foundations was approved on 26 April 1825.

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).