Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuriesHitchcock, Henry-Russell
History
Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell
Architecture, Modern -- 19th century; Architecture, Modern -- 20th century
From the completion of his Observatory in 1814 to the completion of the
Scottish National Gallery forty years later Playfair continued to
ornament Edinburgh with Classical (and on occasion with non-Classical)
structures. Looking south along the cross-axis of the new Town, one sees
just beyond Prince’s Street his Royal Scottish Institution begun in
1822, its rather massive Doric bulk happily crowned just after its
completion in 1836 by the seated figure of the young Queen Victoria
(Plate 34B). Behind this lies his Ionic National Gallery of 1850-4,
which is not unworthy of comparison with Smirke’s British Museum begun
more than a quarter of a century earlier. High to the rear, on the
slopes of the Old Town, rise the two towers of the Free Church College,
also by Playfair and begun in 1846, framing with their crisp Tudorish
forms the richer and more graceful spire (sometimes attributed to Pugin)
of Tolbooth St John’s, which was built by James Gillespie Graham in
1843.
Finer than any individual work of Playfair’s, and splendidly sited on
the south side of Calton Hill, is the High School by Thomas Hamilton
(1784-1858). Begun in 1825, this complex Grecian composition shows how
well the lessons of the Athenian Propylaea were learned by Scottish
architects. More original, but still essentially Grecian, is Hamilton’s
Hall of Physicians in Queen Street of 1844-5.
Banking was not far behind State and Church as a patron of monumental
architecture in Scotland. Before the astylar _palazzo_ mode took over
the financial scene, two banks grander than any in London had been
erected in the Edinburgh New Town. The Commercial Bank of Scotland of
1846 in George Street by David Rhind (1808-83), despite its pedimented
portico, is no longer Greek in detail; the British Linen Bank of 1852 in
St Andrew’s Square by David Bryce (1803-76), more plastically Roman
still, has giant detached columns upholding bold entablature blocks, an
idea deriving from C. R. Cockerell’s rejected competition design for the
Royal Exchange in London.
As the earlier mention of Thomson’s churches in Glasgow will have
indicated, the Greek Revival lasted even longer there than in Edinburgh.
But such edifices as the Royal Exchange of 1829-30 by David Hamilton
(1768-1843) or Clarke & Bell’s Municipal and County Buildings of 1844 do
not rival the work of Playfair and of the other Hamilton in the capital;
nor is there in Glasgow much good urbanism of this period. In his
domestic work Thomson remained closer to the conventional norms of the
Greek Revival than in his churches. However, in Moray Place,
Strathbungo, of 1859, where he lived himself, he produced the finest of
all Grecian terraces (Plate 35A) and, still later, in Great Western
Terrace an ampler if less original composition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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