its walls and with its two main, though irregular, streets running
roughly at right angles towards its four gates, after the pattern of a
Roman camp on which, no doubt in this case, it was based, was a young
Yorkshireman of twenty-one years of age, named John Wood. He was born in
1704 and employed as a surveyor of roads in his native county. He
appears to have been introduced to Bath by Ralph Allen, the post-boy who
rose to be the great merchant prince of the town, owner and developer of
the quarries of the famous Bath Stone on Coombe Down from which the town
is built. In “An Essay towards a Description of Bath,” which Wood
published in 1742, he says “In 1724 a subscription was opened by a deal
merchant of Bristol for carrying the navigation of the river into
execution, so that when I found the work was likely to go on I began to
turn my thoughts towards the improvements of the City of Bath by
building, and for the purpose I procured a plan of the town, which was
sent me into Yorkshire in the summer of the year 1725, where I, at my
leisure hours, formed one design for the ground at the north-west corner
of the city and another at the north-east side of the town and river.”
This latter was afterwards laid out by Thomas Baldwin, and includes
Pulternay Street and part of the Bathwich estate. “After my return to
London,” Wood continues, “I imparted my first design to Mr. Gay, an
eminent surgeon in Hatton Garden and proprietor of the land, and our
first conference was upon the last day of December, 1725.” Wood must
obviously have been an extraordinary young man, not only to have
conceived at the age of twenty-one in his leisure hours, a plan for
developing a strange town on what were then very novel lines, but to
have had the energy and capacity to convince the owners of the land and
push the major part of it through to completion. “On the 31st of March
following” he says, “I communicated my second design to the Earl of
Essex, to whom the land on which it was proposed to be executed then
belonged, and in each design I proposed to make a grand plan of assembly
to be called the Royal Forum of Bath; another place no less magnificent
for the exhibition of sports, to be called the Grand Circus; and a third
place of equal state with either of the former, for the practice of
medicinal exercises, to be called the Imperial Gymnasium of the City.”
In the November of the same year Wood fixed his preliminary articles
with Mr. Gay, who then empowered him to engage anyone that he could
bring into the scheme for the building of a street, 1025 feet long north
and south by fifty feet wide east and west, for an approach to the grand
part of the design. In this way Gay Street, leading to the Circus, was
eventually formed and Wood launched on his numerous schemes for the
betterment of Bath, which even included a canal from Bristol to that
city. For the canal he obtained men from the Chelsea waterworks, and he
says “till that time the real use of the spade was unknown in and about
the city.” “I likewise provided,” he adds, “masons in Yorkshire,
carpenters, joiners and plasterers in London and other places, and from
time to time sent such as were necessary down to Bath to carry on the
building that I had undertaken”; for this astonishing young man was not
only an architect and town planner but his own contractor as well. “It
was not till then,” he goes on to say, “that the lever, the pulley, and
the windlass were introduced among the artificers in the upper part of
Somersetshire, before which time the masons made use of no other method
to hoist up their heavy stones than that of dragging them up with small
ropes against the side of a ladder.” There may be some exaggeration in
this statement of Wood’s—there probably is—but it is sufficient evidence
of the primitive state of affairs in the city when Wood found it, and it
makes more remarkable still the work which this young genius achieved.
Not only, apparently, did he transform a medieval town into one of
metropolitan and even Roman dignity, but he displaced medieval methods
of handling materials and workmanship with modern ones.[1]
Footnote 1:
For the above facts and dates concerning Wood and his work, as well as
for much else, I am indebted to Mr. Mowbray Green’s excellent volume
entitled “The Eighteenth Century Architecture of Bath” which will be
found a mine of information as to architects and owners of most of the
18th century work in the city.
Let us now take a walk through the formal portion of Bath, which Wood
laid out, and on which he and his son built their famous groups of
houses. Starting at the top of Barton Street we enter Queen Square, the
first of Wood’s formal conceptions of a group of houses to be actually
carried out. Queen Square was designed by Wood in 1728, and is roughly a
hundred yards either way. It consists of four blocks of seven large
houses on each side, combined into four architectural compositions. Wood
claimed that he was the first architect in England to unite into one
design a number of separate houses, but Inigo Jones had forestalled him
in Covent Garden and other places. However, Wood was clearly the first
to do it on this scale, and what is more important, first to combine one
fine shape, like Queen Square, with other fine shapes like the Circus
and Royal Crescent, and in this way to present the idea of an
architecturally conceived town. The north side of the Square consists of
a Corinthian composition with a central pediment over six columns and
two square end projections with four columns and flat Corinthian
pilasters in the links between. The order stands on a finely rusticated
basement with moulded heads to the piers between the windows. The whole
is strong Roman work but not lacking in refinement. The east and west
sides of the square are conceived as the wings of a palace of which the
north side is the main front. In the centre house of this north side
under the pediment, Wood lived for a time, and died there in 1754, king
of the domain he had created. The east side of the square was completed
in accordance with Wood’s design and has richly moulded and curiously
carved doorways. In one of these houses, Dr. Oliver, of biscuit fame,
lived. The west side, however, had to be altered to meet the difficulty
of securing building owners and was not finished till after Wood’s
death. The central block, with an Ionic Order in the Neo-Grec style, was
added about 1830. All the houses of Wood’s have fine interiors and well
shaped and finished rooms and rich staircases with turned or twisted
balusters and panelled dado. The staircase of No. 15 is perhaps the
finest in Bath. Its alternate twisted and fluted balusters and handrail
are all in Spanish mahogany. Above is some baroque plaster work very
much like similar Italian work in the Georgian houses of Dublin.
Of the Square garden, Wood says the ground was enclosed with a low stone
wall bearing a balustrade with a wide gate and gate piers on the centre
of each side. In the middle was a basin forty feet in diameter supplied
by a spring, and the four quarters of the garden were enclosed with
espaliered elm and lime trees, though, as Wood adds, these must have
somewhat obstructed the view of the houses opposite. The interesting
thing to note is that all this careful finish was added to a scheme
essentially speculative in character. The same remark applies to the
houses themselves which Wood built here and in the Circus. Though the
work was speculative there was nothing jerry about it. Wood used the
best materials, especially in stone, the proof of which is to be seen in
the state of the houses to-day. With the prospect of wealthy clients
taking up his leases, he was content and indeed too much of an artist in
his work not to build well, in addition to designing well. There is
something therefore to be said, unprofessional as it sounds to-day, for
this combination in one person of architect, builder and owner, which is
to be seen too in the case of the brothers Adam, who so closely followed
Wood and his son at Bath and elsewhere.
Passing up Gay Street, named after Wood’s first Bath client, which has a
number of the good houses in it, Bath accustoms us to, but nothing
remarkable, unless it be the interior of No. 41 with its circular ended
rooms, where John Wood, Jnr. lived, and “The Carved House,” No. 8 on the
opposite side, we come to the Circus, which is the finest of all the
elder Wood’s conceptions. The diameter of the Circus is about 100 yards
and the height of the houses 42 feet. It is laid out with only three
streets entering it and not four cross roads as at Oxford Circus or any
of the other London ones. This at once gives it more solidity and a
greater sense of enclosure as a circular court. It also enabled Wood to
place opposite you as you pass up the gentle slope of Gay Street, a
large unbroken segment of the curved façade, so providing an
architectural finish to that street. In the Circus, Wood has departed
from the strict Palladian manner as understood in England and, instead
of great columns stretching over two stories and standing on a plain
basement, he has provided a range of smaller coupled columns to each
storey. Each of these rows of columns carries its full architrave,
frieze and cornice and the top one a balustrade as well crowned with
pine-apples. There is, therefore, a great profusion of strong horizontal
lines which emphasize the curve in whichever direction the eye is cast,
while the rounded surfaces of the numberless columns give a sense of
richness and fine modelling, impressive in the way that the exterior of
the Colosseum or any great Roman Amphitheatre was. Indeed, walking round
the Circus, you cannot help feeling that you are in the Court of Honour
of some magnificent palace, yet by the absolute similarity of treatment
to each house there is no individual ostentation or vulgarity. The Court
is to-day splendidly enhanced by the magnificent group of trees which
rise from the lawn in the centre. No wonder rulers of Empires like Lord
Chatham (No. 7) and Lord Clive (at No. 14) and artists like Thomas
Gainsborough (at No. 24) once took houses in it, while to-day it is
almost entirely inhabited by members of the medical profession who have
a knack of settling in the best houses in any provincial town. This
Circus took fifteen years to erect, and was therefore completed by
Wood’s son, whose work was always in sympathy with that of his father.
The exterior was, of course, determined once and for all with the first
house built, but the interiors of the houses differ considerably and
were probably designed to suit the requirements of the intending
tenants.
From the Circus one passes by Brock Street, built by the younger Wood,
to the Royal Crescent, another bold and magnificent conception on an
even larger scale. It was commenced in 1767 and finished eight years
later. Though the work of the son, it is in perfect keeping with the
ideas of the father. It consists, too, of one continuous range of
buildings with unbroken roof, forming in this case, a semi-ellipse, 538
feet long. Including the two terminal blocks, it contains a range of 114
great Ionic columns, here combining in the Palladian manner the first
and second floors and standing on a plain base of the ground floor
storey. The whole crescent, with its noble stretch of grass in front of
it, looks south across the valley now containing the Victoria Gardens
and has therefore, as it breasts the hill, one of the pleasantest
outlooks in Bath. So successful was it in combining stately architecture
with a fine prospect that it has been copied further up the hillside in
other crescents, such as Lansdown and Camden Crescents. The individual
houses in the Royal Crescent, being later than those in the Circus,
depend more on plaster decoration for their interior finish, while the
main doors are generally of veneered instead of solid mahogany. The
ceilings of the chief rooms are particularly beautiful in a similar but
rather stronger manner than that one is accustomed to connect with the
name of Adam. It is again very like similar work in Dublin, and has like
it in addition to the ordinary classical _motifs_ an occasional touch of
very effective naturalistic ornament, such as one finds in contemporary
French work. The marble chimney pieces in the chief rooms are of the
various eighteenth century types but with fine simplicity and restraint.
Everything indeed was done to make these houses, while identical on the
exterior, full of interest and refinement within. In this way they
satisfied the ideals of the eighteenth century gentleman for whom they
were designed.
All these houses indeed of the two Wood’s and the fine shapes into which
they combined them seem to show that in times of good taste in the world
it is almost as impossible to do wrong in architecture as in times of
bad taste it is to do right. How otherwise, except by a general
atmosphere of right feeling in such matters and the general acceptance
of a canon such as the Palladian one, are we to explain the fact that
John Wood, hardly more than a boy and an untravelled one at that, came
down from the wilds of Yorkshire and was able not only to change the
whole character of a city, but to make it a model of fine urban housing
for all time?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XXI.
REGENT STREET, OLD AND NEW
IT is so easy, especially in middle age, to be for ever decrying the
works of our contemporaries and praising those of our predecessors. This
is particularly the case in an art like architecture, where old forms by
continued use retain their meaning for centuries, and the significance
of new ones is difficult to grasp. The temptation to condemn the new at
once as upstart and vulgar is obvious. In comparing therefore the new
Regent Street with the old, let us try to keep an open mind. What is it
we have lost and what is it we have gained? Let us consider the former
first.
Old Regent Street was our one definitely metropolitan street. By that I
mean that not only had it a unity, although the individual buildings
were by diverse hands, that no other street in London possessed, but it
had a superior and welcoming urbanity. It was a smiling sunlit
thoroughfare with restful architecture in large and dignified units.
Being built in stucco, it could be repainted every spring, and
consequently in pre-war days always looked bright and clean. The height
of the buildings in relation to the width of the street was such that
the sun could reach the façades and be reflected in the bright plaster.
There were fine broad wall spaces, particularly in the curved walls of
the Quadrant, in the Circuses, and in many of the blocks, which seemed
designed to catch the play of passing light and shadow which is a
characteristic charm of our climate. But better even than these general
factors in the design was the courteous attitude of one building to the
other. None were overpowering in height and outline; each deferred to
the other by giving some echo of its neighbour in its scale, detail, or
composition. The idiom used was of the utmost delicacy, suitable to the
material, yet the ideas expressed were masculine and powerful. Each
block was conceived like a palace stretching from side street to side
street, broad and big in its parts and to a larger scale than any of the
new buildings in the new street, however much taller the latter may be.
It was the aristocratic qualities of restraint and dignity, combined
with a very urbane good-nature reflected from the brightness of the
street and the easy flow of the buildings one after the other which made
old Regent Street the happy, lovable place it was not only to London but
to the whole Empire. Everyone remembered delightful walks there. To
country cousins it was the very essence of the West End. For them it set
the note and gave value to all that part of the town. It was, therefore,
in every sense of the term, metropolitan. No other capital in Europe had
anything like it. The uniformity of the Rue de Rivoli or even of the
Avenue de l’Opera was dull and mechanical in comparison. Starting at the
base court of Waterloo Place, we saw that Nash had created a magnificent
procession of fine shapes, rectangular places, recessed courts, avenues,
circuses, the Quadrant and further avenues and vistas, and had lined
them himself, and with the help of his architect friends, with a series
of stately yet thoroughly English and lovable buildings—a unique
achievement in the history of architecture. To the Regent, accustomed to
the dark brick buildings which formed the mass of the London of his day,
when he first drove down his friend’s street it must have seemed as if
Nash had possessed Aladdin’s lamp and with it had created a new and
glistening fairyland. To us who remember it before it was broken into,
or its plaster and paint allowed to deteriorate, it seems to-day a
lovely but almost equally unreal dream: so far has it already receded
into the past.
Let us now turn to the new Regent Street which has taken the place of
this unique and beautiful possession. Let us remember first that the
conditions of control have remained the same. By this I mean that the
property is still throughout Crown property, and that the control could
have been as tight, and as wise, too, if the same wisdom had been used,
as it was in Nash’s day. The Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who
administer the Crown Estate, now public property, pass all the designs
and lay down any restrictions they desire. They can even impose designs
and architects upon their tenants, as they have done in the Quadrant and
are doing in Piccadilly Circus.
Let us consider the new street as a whole before we discuss any
individual buildings. What is its character? What does it stand for in
our civilisation? Has it anything to offer different from, but
comparable in value to, the old? Let us take the most obvious effects
first. The height of the buildings is different and much greater. So
much sunlight will not now enter the street, and the general air of
spaciousness is no longer there. The great majority of the designs no
longer stretch from return street to return street. The units,
therefore, are narrower, more closely packed, and jostle one another.
Under such circumstances we cannot expect the same suavity, and we
certainly have not got it. The chief place where the present controllers
have tried to give it to us is in the Quadrant. We will return to that
directly. Then the new street is in a different material from the old—in
Portland stone instead of stucco. This has given the buildings a much
heavier appearance and in itself is sufficient to alter the whole
character of the street. On one side of the street the stone will go
black. We can see that already in the Quadrant front to the Piccadilly
Hotel. On the other, and in places where the weather catches it, we may
expect the stone to take on the beautiful pearly quality Londoners know
so well. Now that most of it is white and clean it possesses at the
moment a temporary advantage which must not be expected to last. Soon we
shall have a black-and-grey street, with occasional high lights like
Broad Street, Bishopsgate, or any other City street in the same stone.
But it will be a street of big stores instead of the City banks, or of
the little shops of old Regent Street.
As we walk down new Regent Street we can already feel its new quality.
It is that of parts of Oxford Street, of Corporation Street, Birmingham,
or of Lord Street, Liverpool. That is to say, it is a provincial
quality. The street is no longer possessed by any dominant idea. The
buildings do not harmonise and melt into a single whole. They bear the
ordinary anarchic relations to one another we nowadays unfortunately
expect everywhere else save in Regent Street. True, the main cornices
are at one level, but it is often difficult to distinguish which is the
main cornice, so complicated are the new designs. Domes and turrets
breaking the skyline and other individualistic advertising features have
been allowed. Kingsway, especially in the lower part, is informed by
more general ideas, and consequently is a better street. It is this want
of submission of the individual building and trader to the whole which
has changed the character of the street, and has lowered it from its old
high level to that of a commonplace bustling thoroughfare, efficient
enough, no doubt, for those who consider it a suburban shopping centre,
but not for those who would have wished to see it symbolise again some
of the best aspects of our civilisation.
Let us give the Commissioners and their advisers credit, however, for
trying in two places to produce a continuous design. Of one, Piccadilly
Circus, re-designed as Piccadilly Square, it is too early to speak,
except, perhaps, to say that the work already done shows a slightly
countrified feeling very different from the abstract character of the
old circus. Of the Quadrant, however, where, like all vacillating people
who do not wholly know their own minds, the Commissioners changed from
the irregularities they had allowed in Lower Regent Street to an attempt
to impose upon the shopkeepers a continuous and highly monumental
design, more can be said. From the section which was rebuilt some years
ago as part of the Piccadilly Hotel, one can envisage the effect of the
Quadrant as a whole, if, and when Norman Shaw’s design is carried out.
One can see that its character will be something very different from the
old Quadrant. In place of that bright and happy spot, with its bold,
sweeping, unbroken lines against the sky, we shall have a curved gorge
lined with heavily articulated monumental architecture, of a municipal
or governmental flavour. If the heavy arches are maintained the little
shops will timidly peep out from beneath them. Few trades will survive
such heavy-handed treatment. The little milliners and jewellery-sellers
will have to give place, perhaps, to tombstone-makers and the agents for
cemeteries. The gay character of the street will certainly have gone. We
shall emerge from this curving cleft in mountains of stone in no mood to
saunter down the rest of the street, as in the old days. But who
saunters by great stores? One takes an omnibus or a taxi-cab to the
store one selects, plunges in and stays there, perhaps an hour buying
anything from socks to tomatoes. The character of shopping has changed,
and with it necessarily, the character of the street.
Nevertheless, I am convinced, even by certain of the new Regent Street
buildings themselves, like Mr. Verity’s fine St. George’s house near
Conduit Street, on the left-hand side going north, and some shop fronts
by Mr. Arthur Davis—a perfumery, in particular, in Upper Regent
Street—that had the best architectural brains of the country been
employed on this new problem of giving appropriate character to a street
of great stores it could have been successfully solved. The problem,
however, would have had to have been boldly faced from the start, so
that when we had lost the old unity we should have had a new one to put
in its place. What we have achieved is but a few isolated, disconnected,
and singularly unfortunate attempts at unity and a street which is no
more and no less than any other English shopping street—a cockpit for
competing shopkeepers. The Regent Street we have lost was
definitely—almost infinitely—more than this, and by so much are we, who
own and use the new, the losers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XXII.
FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.