| Fig. 85—Bank of Ireland, Dublin. |
The earliest classical London building of note in the 19th century is Soane’s Bank of England, which as a matter of date belongs in fact to the end of the 18th century; but its architect lived well into the 19th century, and the bank Classical revival in British architecture. may be classed with this section of the subject. Soane had to make something architectural out of the walls of a very extended building of only one storey, in which external windows were not admissible; and he did so by applying a classical columnar order to the walls and introducing sham window architraves. The latter are indefensible, and weaken the expression of the building; the columnar order was the received method at the time of making a building (as was supposed) “architectural,” and the building has grace and dignity, and could hardly be taken for anything except a bank, although a more robust and massive treatment would have been more expressive of the function of the building, as a kind of fortress for the storage of money. It was only some years later that the Greek revival took some hold of English architects (the Bank of England is rather Roman than Greek); the impetus to it was probably given by the “Elgin marbles”; Stuart and Revett’s great work on the Antiquities of Athens had been issued a good while previously, the three first volumes being dated respectively 1762, 1787 and 1794; but the appearance of the fourth volume in 1816 was no doubt influenced by the transportation to London of the Elgin marbles, and the sensation created by them. One of the first architectural results was the erection, at an immense cost in comparison with its size, of the church of St Pancras in London (1819-1822), designed by Inwood, who published a fine and still valuable monograph on the Erechtheum, and showed his enthusiasm for Greek architecture by copying the Erechtheum order and doorways for his façade, and erecting over it a tower composed of the Temple of the Winds with an octagonal imitation of the monument of Lysicrates imposed above it. This use of Greek monuments was architecturally absurd, though at the time it was no doubt the offspring of a genuine enthusiasm.
A better use was made of the study of Greek architecture by William Wilkins (1778-1839), who was in his way a great architect, and whose University College (1827-1828), as designed by him, was a noble and dignified building, of which he only carried out the central block with the cupola and portico. The wings were somewhat altered from his design but not materially spoiled, but the university authorities permitted the vandalism of erecting a low building as a partial return of the quadrangle on the fourth side, for the purposes of a mechanical laboratory, which ruined the appearance of the building.[4] Wilkins’s other well-known work is the National Gallery (1832-1838), which he was not allowed to carry out exactly as he wished, and in which the cupola and the “pepperpots” are exceedingly poor and weak. But his details, especially the profiles of his mouldings, are admirably refined, and show the influence of a close study of Greek work. Among other prominent English architects of the classic revival in England are Sir Robert Smirke and Decimus Burton (1800-1881). To Burton we owe the Constitution Hill arch and the Hyde Park screen. The latter is a very graceful erection of its kind; the arch has never been completed by the quadriga group which the architect intended as its crowning feature, though for many years it was allowed to be disfigured by the colossal equestrian statue of Wellington, completely out of scale and crushing the structure. Smirke is kept in memory by his fine façade of the British Museum, which has been much criticized for its “useless” colonnades and the wasted space under them. The criticism is hardly just; for classic colonnades have at least some affinity with the purposes of a museum of antique art, and it conveys the impression of being a frontispiece to a building containing something of permanent value and importance. The early classic revival set its mark also, in a very fine and unmistakable manner, on the capital of the sister island. Dublin is almost a museum of fine classic buildings of the period, among which the most remarkable is the present Bank of Ireland (fig. 85), originally begun as the Parliament House. The beginning of the building belongs to the 18th century, but it was not completed in its present form till 1805, and was the work of five successive architects, only one of them, James Gandon (1743-1823), a man of the first importance; but it was Gandon who in 1790 did most to give the building its effective outline on plan, by introducing one of the curved quadrant walls, the building being subsequently finished in accordance with this suggestion. It is a remarkable combination of symmetry and picturesqueness, and as a one-storey classic building is far superior to Soane’s Bank of England, with which a comparison is naturally suggested. Gandon’s custom house, with its fine central cupola, is another notable example. Edinburgh too can show examples of the classic revival, and bears the title of “modern Athens” as much from her architectural experiments as from her intellectual claims; she illustrates the application of Greek architecture to modern buildings in two really fine examples, the Royal Institution by W.H. Playfair (1780-1857), and the high school by Thomas Hamilton (1784-1858). It was a pity that she added to these the collection of curiosities on the Calton Hill.
| Fig. 86.—Liverpool Branch of the Bank of England. (Cockerell.) |
But before we quit the classic revival in England, there are two architects to be named who came a little later in the day, living in fact into the time of the Gothic revival, who were superior to any of the earlier classic practitioners: Harvey Lonsdale Elmes and C.R. Cockerell. Elmes, who died very young, seems to have been as completely a born architectural genius as Wren, and his great work, St. George’s Hall at Liverpool, has done more than any other building in the world to glorify the memory of the classic revival. Granting all that may be said as to the unsuitability of Greek architecture to the English climate, one can hardly complain of any movement in architecture which gave the opportunity for the production of so grand an architectural monument. It is true that it is badly planned and lighted, and the exterior and interior do not agree with each other (the exterior is Greek, and the great hall is Roman); but if from our present point of view it is a mistake, it is certainly one of the finest mistakes ever made in architecture. Cockerell, who completed the interior of the building after Elmes’s death, was an architect permeated with the principles and feeling of Greek architecture, who brought to his work a refinement of taste and perception in regard to detail which has rarely been equalled and never surpassed. Perhaps the very best example of his scholarly taste in the application of classic architecture to modern uses is to be found in his façade to the branch Bank of England at Liverpool (fig. 86).
| From a photo by W.A. Manseli & Co. |
| Fig. 87.—Royal Theatre, Berlin. (Schinkel.) |
| From a photograph by W.A. Manseli & Co. |
| Fig. 88.—Nikolai Kirche, Potsdam. (Schinkel.) |
Plate IX.
| Photo, Seer. |
| Fig. 115.—PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, BUDAPEST. (STEINDL.) |
| Photo, Lowy. |
| Fig. 116.—PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, VIENNA. (HANSEN.) |
| Photo, Linde. |
| Fig. 117.—PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, BERLIN. (WALLOT.) |
Plate X.