Design for completing the buildings on Downing Street, January 1827

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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 (243) 49/5/38

Purpose

Design for completing the buildings on Downing Street, January 1827

Aspect

243 Site plan

Scale

bar scale of 7/16 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

labelled: Whitehall, (in Soane's hand) Hatch for Foreign Ministry / see small plan, State Paper Office, King Street, Proposed new official / residence for / the Sec. of State / Home Department, 85'0'' / Downing S^t, 65.0, Line of front of old Houses in Downing Street, New Privy / Council / Chamber / &c, Privy Council / Offices, Original / Centre of the New Privy Council Offices &^c, Hall, Board of Trade, Treasury Passage, Secretary of State / for the Home Department / to be added to the Treasury / without the level of the / Floors, Treasury Passage leading into the Park, Chancellor of the / Exchequer, Secretary of State Foreign Department, (pencil) Triumphal / Arch, S^t James Park

Signed and dated

25 Jan^y 1827

Medium and dimensions

Pen, grey, pink, lemon yellow and blue washes, pricked for transfer on wove paper (465 x 675)

Hand

Soane office

Notes

Soane's new proposal, in January 1827, is to mirror the Board of Trade Offices with a new building on King Street. Instead of being parallel to the Privy Council Offices, the new 'State Paper Office' and 'proposed new official residence for the Sec. of State Home Department' are placed at an angle with the centre marked by a line through Downing Street. The two wings are bridged by a triumphal arch which is placed at the end of the Privy Council Chamber. In the National Archives is a drawing entitled 'Copy of an original plan of the basement story of the Board of Trade and Council Offices at Whitehall' (WORK 30/319). The drawing is dated '24 April 1833' and is inscribed in George Bailey's hand: 'This line of front is imitated from the Massimi Palace by Bramanté' - that is, the Palazzo Massimo 'alle Colonne', now attributed to Baldassarre Peruzzi.

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.

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