Design for completing the new government buildings, March 1829

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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 (278) 49/5/36

Purpose

Design for completing the new government buildings, March 1829

Aspect

278 Plan of the front and elevation of the new government buildings; (verso) outline plan of Downing Square and Downing Street with the new government buildings

Scale

bar scale of 1/12 inch to 1 foot

Inscribed

labelled (in Soane's hand): Door, A, B, C, Chimney Shafts / as executed except / the ?middle part A to be / added, Centre between B C corrected and (pencil) some dimensions given; (verso): Downing Square, Council Offices, Whitehall

Signed and dated

7 March 1829

Medium and dimensions

Pen, sepia, pink, blue and burnt Sienna washes, (verso) pen, grey and yellow washes on two sheets of wove paper, affixed (543 x 1078)

Hand

Charles James Richardson (1809-71, pupil and assistant 1824-1837)

Notes

Soane's new government offices were completed up to the Treasury Passage (labelled 'C' on drawing 278) but the Home Office was not rebuilt until 1844 when it was included in Charles Barry's alterations. None of the south range was executed.
The verso of drawing 278 is datable to before February 1825 - before the idea of the south range was conceived.

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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