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Number 2 Adam Street was located on the eastern side of the street, to southern end of the block.
Its first resident from 1771 to 1782 was John Arnold, a clockmaker, who also established his office in the house.
In the nineteenth century it was joined with number 1 Adam Street, and together they were the home of Rev. Vicesimus Knox from 1812-21, followed by his oldest son, also Vicesimus. In 1840-41 numbers 1 and 2 were occupied by the New Zealand Colonisation Company and its secretary John Ward; in 1844 they were the home of William Bridges Adams, an inventor; and in 1899 Sir John Scott, the judicial adviser to the Khedive of Egypt.
Level
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).
Contents of Number 2, Adam Street
- Finished drawing for the ceiling for the drawing room, 1769; it is not known if this design was executed (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the dining room, c1769-70; it is not known if this design was executed (1)
- Design for the chimneypiece for the front parlour, c1769-70; it is not known if this design was executed (1)