The Sun.
London, England, 1853-10-17 00:00:00

METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS,
NEW CANNON STREET.

Although the English inability to produce fine build-
ngs is almost becoming proverbial there is no real neces-
sity for such a sentence being written against us. There
is an abundant fund of artistic power in the country,
needing only demand to exhibit itself in supply. There
is material enough to make of architecture a great art
and a noble profession. We may have in 50 years from
this time a multitude of grand buildings if the professors
of architecture will demand for themselves that protec-
tion from quakery and ignorance which a thorough
education and a legally constituted professional exami-
nation would go far to effect. There is no branch of art
so beset with impostors, there is none so neglected and
ill-understood, as this parent of all fine arts. This ought
surely not to be, and as surely need not be. A great
nation and an antique people like ourselves, whose an-
cestors have raised piles which it strikes us with rever-
ence to enter, ought to advance and not recede in its
intellectual refinement and in fine-art manifestation.
We have not the excuse of raw inexperience nor of phy-
sical difficulty. We have had an architecture in Eng-
land. We ought to have one now.
These considerations arise from the evident tendency
which architecture is exhibiting to regain her true posi-
tion, as displayed especially in the improved tone of build-
ing in the metropolitan streets. The fluctuating search
for a standard has, it would seem, at length fixed itself
to that form and development whence it may once more
become an interpreter of the age. Thus in passing
down New Cannon-street, which is the most advanced
and will be the most telling of the City improvements,
the visitor may now notice with interest and gratifica-
tion several specimens of City architecture which would
enrich any capital in Europe, and are particularly appro-
priate in character to the imperial commerce and trans-
actions of London. A few remarks upon the physiog-
nomy of these buildings as they necessarily occur may
not at this moment be unwelcome.
At the left-hand corner next King William-street the
large pile of offices and shops, designed by Mr. Dawson,
is an important feature, the general effect of which is
quiet and good, although hardly improved by the frag-
ment of a fourth story perched up at one angle, nor by
a shop door door squeezed in at the opposite end of the
building on the ground floor. The ranges of windows
are well proportioned, and as a fenestral design right
judgment has been shown in their regular repetition, con-
trasting this erection very favourably with most of its
neighbours. An ingeniously complex fret rues along,
as a string, at the third floor level. The building
next in order to this, for the Merchants and Trades-
man's Life Assurance Society, has a stone front, I
with columned and pedimented windows on the first
floors, two tiers of windows—one with running archi-
traves, and one with coronas—and on the ground floor
an arcade of stilted segment arches. This design offers
another proof of the value of repetition, the regularly-
spaced and uniformly-dressed apertures forming a suffi-
cient excellence of effect to counterbalance, or nearly so,
occasional errors of composition. Among such may be
enumerated the insufficient importance of the cornice, and
the coupling of its console trusses. Had this coupling
been carried through to the windows, the design had
been weakened, as there are examples in New Cannon-
street to confirm. Again, the stilted segmental arches
of the basement have a somewhat weak effect. A
stilted segment arch is in itself an error. The impost
mouldings become unmeaning. Had the window reveals
been deeper, and the double-bellied ballusters removed
from the first floor windows, the ensemble, we think,
would have been improved. However, despite these
things, the building, from its aggregate effect and pleas-
ing tint, ranks decidedly among the best recent works
in London.
The blocks of houses which follow fall very far short of
the buildings we have just noticed. They merely elicit the
remark that the cornices are poor and meagre, and the
window dressings feeble. In the next block to them the
staring green advertising boards are greatly to he repre-
hended, vulgarising as they do the whole vicinity. Here,
boo, may be noticed the loss of effect through ill-arranged
windows. A triple group to each house occupies the first
floor, whilst above the central opening in each case a pier
runs up to the main cornice. Again, an unjudicious
doorway in the centre of the block offends the eye by its
crowded and incongruous decoration. Another objec-
tion is the wide ground-floor windows, which leave the
houses standing as it were upon slender pier-like posts,
which the superincumbent weight seems ready to drive
into the earth. As we pass on, the same or similar
faults more or less prevail, redeemed only by a general
effect of magnitude and mass ; and even this is impaired
by a particularly mean-looking little public-house, nearly
opposite St. Swithin's Church. But when we reach the
opening formed by the commencement of Watling-street,
some of that improved taste meets us again, which we
have observed as an increasing element in the new Lon-
don streets, Here the Minerva Life Office, designed by
Mr. Beasely, with its circular corner of super-columna-
tions, and its well-recessed windows, favourably occupy
a prominent position. At this point of the street the
view of St. Paul's opens well, the dome and western
campanile terminating magnificently the line of lofty
buildings. Beyond the Minerva Life Office, and next
to it, a block of warehouses in the occupation of the
Messrs. Macintosh and Messrs. Saunders, designed by
Mr. Hague, occurs—one of the most excellent in this
street, and, we may add, in London. A general effect
of repose and quiet business-like expression is ob-
tained by the simple management of a few features. A
central mass, containing four seven-windowed stories,
rises above two flanking buildings of three stories in
height, the fourth floor in these flanks being an attic and
purposely hidden. The ground story runs through the
whole block as an uninterrupted rustic base, pierced by
segmental-headed windows and doors ; and are again in-
stances of the value of a regular repetition of parts. On
the left-hand side of the street from Watling-street, to-
wards St. Paul's, no building can properly be said to
exceed mediocrity. At the corner of Queen-street Messrs
Cowan's premises call for notice, as the last yet erected
on the line from King William-street, and as exhibiting
originality, if not absolute beauty.
The most obviously-striking feature of the new street
is the great sale warehouses of Messrs. Cooke, Sons, and
Co. These buildings rise like a rampart above the sur-
rounding houses, and form an internal arrangement of
plan, as well as in external character of design, perhaps as
good a model for a commercial building of its gigantic
class as the metropolis contains. Of a magnitude com-
parable with that of many engineering works, this pile
offers a strong contrast to many of them in these days
of scientific building. The architect has apparently con-
sidered that there is a wiser economy possible than that
of saving material to the extreme—that a building in-
tended to last should rather submit to quiescent weight
and pressure, than consist in the balance of opposing
drains. He has chosen and expressed in his design the
architecture of statics rather than dynamics, and he has
provided his material accordingly in masses and weights.
The foundation of the buildings, we have been in
formed, penetrate through more than 20 feet of made
soil to the natural ground level of London (in this place
a compact yellow sand), below which depth they are
continued in places where concrete could be with advan-
tage substituted for the natural soil. Beds of concrete,
up wards of 10 feet in depth, sustain the weight of walls,
piers, and columns, and carry it into the solid ground.
From this conerete the walls rise, commencing. with a
thickness of nearly three feet, to thei parapet above the
main cornice, where they terminate in a thickness of two
feet three inches, at 90 feet from the ground. The length
of the building which lies in the direction of the length
of the facade is bisected by a broad aisle, so to speak, 30
feet wide, between a double arcade. On the ground
floor, the entrance door is placed at one end of this aisle,
and looks on to the principal staircase at the other end.
Right and left from the centre of the arcades, at right-
angles with them, runs the central avenue, 170 feet
long, down the length of the building. This avenue is
marked out by rows of columns, leaving parallel rows—
also running the full length of the building—to the
right and left of them, which leave again on each side 1
a bay between themselves and the external walls.
There are thus five avenues produced, running through I
the length of the building. The central one forms a
passage-way—on each side of it much wider avenues
contain the selling counters and tables, and beyond
these the fourth and fifth avenues are filled by tables or
desks, or left for passages, or both. The same general
plan is adopted on the basement ground, and on the
first and second floors. Above the second floor level the
remaining floors are carried round in a ring, forming a
continuous apartment following the external walls, and
thus leaving a large well-space in the centre of the build-
ing. This well-space is employed for lighting the four
first floors, which it does by means of lantern-lights,
transmitting their light from story to story down to the
basement, through well-holes cut in every floor, each
over each, round which the sale counters are fixed. This
disposition of plan is simple to a degree. All is visible
at a glance, but each department is entirely separated
from the other. Thus, on entering the central door, a
purchaser has before him the silk and velvet depart-
ment, placed in the arcaded aisle ; on the left hand the
cotton, and on the right hand the stuff department, and
so on ; while from the landing of the principal staircase
a light and elegant iron bridge spanning Little Carter-
lane, connects the pile of building in St. Paul's Church-
yard with a second pile facing Carter-lane, built at the
back of the first.
In one corner of the building a steam-lift
rapidly from the top to the bottom ioors,casrtreipepsignogodats
1;
every intermediate story if need be.Thisin
thelift
basement.is worked
by a 6-horse-power grasshopper engine
The waste steam is conducted in pipes beneath the base-
ment floor, to open gratings under the well holes cut
through the floor for light, through which well-holes
of
comft-
o rn
warm air are thus caused to ascend, diffusing a t
each
able temperature over the entire building.
of the warehouse are fire-mains connected with largeed
tanks and cisterns of water on the roof, and on every
floor two 70-feet coils of leather hose, with direction
pipes attached to them, are screwed on to this main, by
which means an instant supply of water may be thrown
upon any portion of the interior, while on the roof at
each end of the building are constructed tanks holding
altogether 12,000 gallons of water (pumped up by the
steam-engine in the basement story), ready for perpetual
or immediate supply of any kind.
It may be mentioned that this vast building was
erected in two successive portions, to allow of the unin-
terrupted transaction of business—a work, no doubt, of
considerable difficulty. The time occupied in fitting the
new premises for occupation is, we apprehend, without
example for rapidity in the annals even of London build-
S ingt, ~the- first or western half having been occupied inri
~ -:,-6.o3ixteen weeks from its commencement, and the secon,.
-re- i'.)-/ stud larger part in twelve weeks. The builder was Mr.
fl":' - ' 4..% Wilson, of Southwark.
-, The greater number of the London sale warehouses,
'Th , even those newly erected, we need hardly observe,
taref
,445, utterly deficient in anything like artistic arrangemenlo
` plan • but Mr. Knowles has shown in this huge bui d-
,,,-.. 4-- ing laim effects, highly picturesque, may be produced by
na-a -the thoughtful adjustment of long-neglected meang.