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

.. - METROPOLITAN IMPROVEMENTS. I The interior, however, is not,
yet finally- comple.ted—a
NEW CANNON STREET.
careful and subdued colouring of the whole being, we
' I are told, intended ; but already architectural pictures
4- . and artistic groupings of features abound, assisted mate-
Although the English inability to produce fine build- ' rially by the rich and glowing colours of the silks, vel-
- ngs is almost becoming proverbial there is no real neces- vets, ribbons, &c., which compose the " stock" of the
sity for such a sentence being written against us. There establishment. At present the tint of the red bricks of
is an abundant fund of artistic power in the country, the facade—some 30 feet longer and 20 higher than that
needing only demand to exhibit itself in supply. There lof the Farnese Palace at Rome—is too vivid ; but when
is material enough to make of architecture a great art toned down by a little London smoke, we shall be better
and a noble profession. We may have in 50 years from able to judge of the value of its introduction. , External
: ' . this time a multitude of grand buildings if the professors polychromy remains yet a question. With regard to
- of architecture will demand for themselves that protec- the rest of the exterior, however, there need be no ques-
tion from quakery and ignorance which a thorough tion. The cornice exhibits, to our thinking, a just ar-
education and a legally constituted professional exami- tistic feeling for the true style of the revived architecture
nation would go far to effect. There is no branch of art of a day now dawning. Statical, horizontal, and fenes-
so beset with impostors, there is none so neglected and tral are terms which will exprees its dominant elements
ill-understood, as this parent of all fine arts. This ought of composition. In conclusion we may observe that
surely not to be, and as surely need not be. A great ninety-nine buildings out of s. hundred reared in Eng-
nation___r and an antique people like ourselves, whose an- land struggle towards this species of architecture. M •
cestors have raised piles which it strikes us with rever- Knowles, in such edifices as 'Messrs. Cooke's warehouses
ence to enter, ought to advance and not recede in its in St. Paul's Churchyard, leas done a service to his art,
intellectual refinement and in fine-art manifestation. for he has promoted and e-o.forced its natural tendency.
We have not the excuse of raw inexperience nor of phy- In this case the architect rend the artist have manifestly
sical difficulty. We have had an architecture in Eng- been combined.—Mornivag Ilerald.
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 especiallyin 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 runs 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,
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 offerie
another proof of the value of repetlion, 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 ma-y 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 denign 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 ballueters 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 be repre-
hended, vulgarising as they do the whole vicinity. Here,
too, 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 biock 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 sisiple 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 welt 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
strains. 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,
• ure wards of 10 feet in depth, sustain the weight of walls,
"iers, and columns, and carry it into the solid ground.
From this concrete the walls rise, commencing with a
thickness of nearly three feet, to the 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,
4 ' and looks on to the principal staircase at the other end.
Right and left from the centre of the arcades, at right-
aninles with them, runs the central avenue, 170 feet
• 10-eg, down the length of the building. This avenue is
'narked 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
a bay between themselves and the external walls.
There are thus five avenues produced, running through
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
(neer 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
nom the other. Thus, on entering the central door, a
trelmeer has before him the silk and velvet depart-
Placed,o4lle in the arcaded aisle ; on the left hand the
no"""01:', and' n the right hand the stuff department, and
a light. iwnhdileelfrom the landing of the principal staircase
exit iron bridge spanning Little Carter-
lane, connectse
yard with a secreapile of building in St. Paul's Church-
back of the firs
In one corner of theplle facing Carter-lane, built at the
to the
a steam-lift carries goods
rapidly from the topbevyearydi-nhteererme.edpeiwat the bottom floors, stopping at
gory if be. This lift is worked
The waste steam is conducted
engine in the basement.
ment floor, to open gratings ecl in Pipes beneath the base-
ment
the well-holes cut
through the floor for light, through which streams of
warm air are thus caused to ascend, diffusing a comfort-
.
ahle temperature over the entire building.e At each end
of the warehouse are fire mains
with large
connected
dand on every 1
tanks and cisterns of water on the roof,
floor two 70-feet coils of leather hose,roof with direction
pipes attached to them, are screwed on to this
which means an instant supply of water may beintaliHn' by
upon any portion of the interior, while on the roof
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-
ing, the first or western half having been occupied in
sixteen weeks from its commencement, and the second
• and larger part in twelve weeks. The builder was Mr.
Willson, of Southwark.
S Tr IN greater number of the London sale warehouses,
14-4 5,•el -6
~ e newly. erected,. we. need hardly observe, are
~..., ,-
iliwee►. . e tent in anything like artistic arrangement
._ of
‘'‘7 444‘e • ' _ .I*, r. Knowles has shown in this huge build-
," Z...-e (5.,,,,..i,nW/es, ts, highly picturesque, may be produced by
'or SA lri- ii:,1,17 :t:. ..14 1 adjustment of long-neglected means.
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