Explore Collections Explore The Collections
You are here: CollectionsOnline  /  [17] Alternative design for a block of ten terraced houses, 1785

Browse

  • image SM Adam volume 38/46

Reference number

SM Adam volume 38/46

Purpose

[17] Alternative design for a block of ten terraced houses, 1785

Aspect

Plan of the bedchamber (second) storey and elevation of the principal façade of a block of ten four-storey terraced houses, on the same plan as Adam volume 38/45, but to an alternative decorative scheme, with the same shop windows within relieving arches, but the basement is not rusticated. The first-storey doors and windows are behind an arcade, but the second- and third-storey windows are not behind a colonnade. The central nine bays project to form a central block, with further projecting end bays, surmounted by attics containing Diocletian windows and pediments, and instead of sculpture to either side there are three-bay width pediments

Scale

bar scale of 7/10 inch to 10 feet

Inscribed

Design for Ten houses proposed to be Built in Lieth (sic) Street Edinburgh (in the hand of William Adam and underwritten in pencil) / with a Terrace and Shops under them (in the hand of William Adam and underwritten in pencil) / a fair copy of / this send to Edin / 12t. July 1785 (verso) [cropped] of Drawings of Houses near the Register office / [cropped] to George Home Esqe. 12t. July 1785

Signed and dated

  • 1785
    datable to 1785

Medium and dimensions

Pen, pencil and wash on laid paper (733 x 507)

Hand

Adam office hand, possibly Robert Morison, with title inscriptions in the hand of William Adam

Watermark

JWHATMAN and fleur de lis within crowned cartouche

Literature

Bolton, 1922, Volume II, Index p. 11
King, 2001, Volume II, p. 76
For a full list of literature references see scheme notes.

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).