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Wren, like the much-besieged Inigo Jones, was a fan of classicism although he combined it with Baroque. He immediately drew up a Utopian plan to reconstruct the entire London house City along classical lines, replacing the former warren of twisting streets and a narrow path in between the two buildings with broad tree-lined avenues radiating from piazzas or major public buildings. The scheme was shelved, however, partly for being too radical and partly because the compulsory purchase of land necessary wasn’t achievable. Wren’s first two plans for St Paul’s Cathedral, his magnum compositi construction Wren gradually slipped many of his previous ideas in through this loophole. By the time this ruse was uncovered, the dome was too far advanced to change. St Paul’s took 35 years to build and Wren turned 66 before it was completed, but in a full and long life he managed to squeeze in a couple of other enduring London house landmarks, too. His signature is writ large all over the Royal Exchange in the City, the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the Royal Naval College and the Drury Lane Theater. With wren gone, his influence Nicholas Hawks more and James Gibb stepped out of his shadow. Both had worked with the great man on, were similarly thrown back in his face. The main objection both times was that the dome atop it was too Roman Catholic and too little like a Protestant Steeple. Wren plugged away with substitute proposals, toning down the dome and incorporating a spire. However, the necessary warrant of royal approval signed allowed for ornamental variations. Craftily, duringwhile he was alive, especially since parliament passed an act in 1711 to build 50 new churches but now they moved on to their masterpieces, such as Christ Church and St-Martin in the fields. These two architects’ buildings are usually termed English Baroque. Meanwhile, commercial developers had helped rebuild homes that were lost to the Great Fire. Their exploits are noteworthy for three things. Firstly, many of these developers gave their names to contemporary London streets, such as Stormy, Bond and Fritch. Secondly, they invented the formula of leasehold when they divided their land into plots and leased them with the proviso that the properties on those plots all are built in a certain style. Thirdly, they set a precedent in London in which commercial concerns drove London house architecture. This is an event that the city has seen a lot of since. By the time the 18th century rolls around, you begin to feel sympathy for Inigo Jones. Whereas he was treated with suspicion for his introduction of classicism to Britain, it seems that now the time was ripe for a revival. Neo-Palladianism is still much in evidence in surviving Georgian Town houses. Among the greatest exponents of this revised style were Robert Adam and his brothers. The Victorians demolished much of their work, but an excellent example that endures is Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath. The Adam brothers’ fame has been eclipsed by that of the Regency architects John Nash and John Soane. According to experts, once and only once, has a great plan for London, affecting the development of the capital as a whole, been projected and carried to completion. The plan to which experts refers is that by John Nash to give London a spine by creating Regent St as a straight north-south axis from St James Park in the south to the new Regent Park in the north. This grand scheme also involved the formation of Trafalgar Square, the development of the mall and the western end of the strand, as well as the cutting of Regent Canal to serve Regent Park. Although completed, the plan did involve compromise, as many landowners lining Nash’s proposed route refused to sell and he was forced to opt for a sweeping curve of a street. However, that curve was at first a great success. The Victorians later ripped down some of his buildings, but his legacy remains. Nash worked on Buckingham Palace and left some lovely crescents full of Nash Terraces at the entrance to Regent Park. Nash’s contemporary John Soane was arguably a better architect. However, he lacked the royal patronage that Nash enjoyed and is best remembered today not for a building but for the jaw dropping collection of objects art that assembled in the Sir John Soane’s museum. All that’s left of his Bank of England on Thread needle St is a appreciate version of his exterior wall. The Dulwich picture gallery is a better example of his work. Property developers such as Thomas Cubitt were instrumental in erecting new middle-class housing in Belgravia and Pimlico. However, the 19th century was also the first age during which homes were purpose built for the working classes. Before that, poorer city culture has tended to inhabit the cast-off homes of the rich. Now with London’s population going through a boom- from just fewer than one million at the start of the 19th century to 4.5 million at its end- private property speculators began erecting buildings designed to be affordable for the underprivileged even when new. The effect this had on building quality is encapsulated in one landlord’s instruction to a builder working on 20 hectares of his land in Camden Town to erect 500 third-rate London House or a lesser number of superior rates, so as to be of the same value in 15 years. This kind of slapdash approach reached its apogee in the East End, where crowded tenements soon turned into crime- ridden slums or rookeries, as they were known. Some decades later, architect Ebenezer Howard also addressed himself to the quality of life in London House, deciding the simplest answer was to get out. His plans for green, planned cities outside the capital came to fulfill in new towns like Welwyn Garden City and Milton Keynes. The great traditional architect Edwin Lutyens also demonstrated a penchant for the rustic. Although Lutyens, from Sussex, mostly built outside London, he did contribute to the countryside within a city development of Hampstead Garden suburb. He also designed the Cenotaph in Whitehall and Britannic London House in Fins Bury Square. Related
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