Variant designs for the new buildings, November 1826

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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 new government buildings on Whitehall and the completion of Downing Street with a Triumphal Arch, December 1825-May 1833 (100)

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Reference number

SM (241) 49/3/43

Purpose

Variant designs for the new buildings, November 1826

Aspect

241 Two front elevations with a plan of the frontage

Scale

bar scale of 1/12 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

Copy Approved / Liverpool / F Robinson, (in Soane's hand) Elevation as (last) approved / with the Columns order / of the three Columns / in the Campo Vaccino / & the balustrade over the Attic of the Corridor removed

Signed and dated

(pencil) Lincolns Inn Fields / 25^th Nov^r 1826

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, yellow ochre and blue washes, pricked for transfer with double ruled and sepia wash border on wove paper (543 x 750)

Hand

Stephen Burchell (1806-?, pupil 1823-28)

Watermark

J Whatman Turkey Mill 1826

Notes

Robinson reported to the Select Committee that he had been led to believe that the balustrade 'was to be the part of an entire story, and not merely two walls very near together for the mere purpose of concealing the skylights' (1828 Report). At a meeting at Fife House in November 1826 objections were raised about this balustrade (top elevation), which Soane had mistakenly replaced after having it altered instead of having it removed. The Treasury officials subsequently ordered its removal (bottom elevation).

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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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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