2King’s Cross Station, 1851, by Lewis Cubitt
3York Central Station, c. 1890
ENGINEERING. Victorian railway engineers with their viaducts, tunnel entrances and stations produced many fine additions to the landscape. Steam added dignity where the internal combustion engine has only brought squalor. King’s Cross Station [2], built in 1851 from designs of a civil engineer, Lewis Cubitt, is a simple building in London brick scarcely visible today because of a conglomeration of trivial building in front of it. It expresses its purpose clearly enough: one arch is the departure side and the other is the arrival side. A colonnade serves to protect people alighting from or entering carriages.
This view of York Central Station [3] is a late Victorian photograph. The ironwork is by Butler & Sons of Leeds. It is of four spans of 55 feet and is 795 feet long. The cathedral-like beauty is fortuitous, except that Gothic is often engineering in stone and this is engineering in iron. It is, however, a mistake to confuse æsthetics with morality, to say that because a thing expresses its purpose it is ipso facto beautiful. Much depends on the purpose. Cathedrals were built to the glory of God when men believed in Him. Stations like York were built for railways when railways were admired and Britain was still proud of her craftsmanship and confident in material progress. Much modern public building is the product of unconfident committees of taste, such as the Royal Fine Arts Commission.
4 St. George’s Hall, Liverpool, 1841, by H. L. Elmes
THE CLASSIC SURVIVAL went on right through the Victorian age. It is a scholarly elaboration of the Greek Revival into Græco-Roman and Roman and even Baroque. For the most part it is the Conservative style and goes with big clubs, velvet curtains, municipal dinners, vintage port and good manners. One of its finest expositions is St. George’s Hall, Liverpool [4], designed by H. L. Elmes in 1841, who died before it was finished.
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THE CLASSIC SURVIVAL was maintained by many architects, such as C. R. Cockerell, Tite, Brodrick of Leeds, Pennethorne and “Greek” Thomson. John Gibson, Sir Charles Barry’s pupil, built most of the National Provincial Banks in Great Britain and this example at Sunderland [5], 1878 is one of his last.It is full-blown Italianate adapted to commercial purposes.
5 National Provincial Bank, Sunderland, 1878 by John Gibson
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL. Victorian architects did not consider themselves as either gentlemen amateurs like Wren or as builders, as they did a century or more earlier. They had become “professional” and not trades-people, just as doctors had ceased to be “apothecaries” and lawyers mere “attorneys.” The Royal Institute of British Architects was founded in 1837. Henceforth the interest in architecture shifts from regional styles and builders to individuals. Who was in who’s office mattered and whether he was a Classic or a Gothic man. London men received many provincial jobs. Local styles disappeared in favour of individual styles by the big men. Without a doubt the more vigorous men were in favour of Gothic. There were the pure medievalists who believed Pugin’s false and then attractive dictum that the only Christian styles were the ones with a pointed arch. The Gothicists sunk themselves into the medieval dream of that eccentric and persuasive genius, whose accomplishment is usually less impressive than that of his followers. Raphael Brandon, who designed the superb Catholic Apostolic Church [6], Gordon Square, London, in 1855, was a medievalist. He and his brother produced standard works on roofs and Gothic ornament drawn and measured from English examples. They piled the fruit of their learning one on top of another so that Salisbury, Lichfield, Lincoln and Carlisle Cathedrals contribute details which support a hammerbeam roof of East Anglian type. The whole is welded together by an exquisite sense of proportion not so apparent in their other works. But this noble Gordon Square church for a beautiful liturgy is copying Gothic rather than thinking in it.
6Catholic Apostolic Church, Gordon Square, London, 1855, by Raphael Brandon
7 Lancing Chapel, Sussex, 1854–1870, by R. C. and R. H. Carpenter and W. Slater
THE MEDIEVALISTS, looking back to Pugin’s dream of the past, usually met with the approval of the Camden Society in the Church. They favoured Middle Pointed or Decorated, considered the most “perfect,” as opposed to Early Pointed or Early English, considered the most “pure.” Perpendicular or late pointed was called “debased.” Generally Camdenians copied, but they sometimes produced buildings as fine as any medieval one and except for texture hardly distinguishable from the medieval. R. C. Carpenter, his son R. H. Carpenter and their partner W. Slater built Lancing Chapel [7], Sussex, 1854–70, which is one of the best medievalist buildings.
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THE SUCCESSFUL COPYIST was Sir Gilbert Scott, who had the biggest practice any one architect has ever enjoyed in Britain. He had a large office and talented staff and could himself design some severely handsome buildings, as in his additions to Bradfield Church, Berks, and his new church of St. Anne, Alderney, and he could be bold, as in the Albert Memorial, and use picturesque outline, as in his St. Pancras Hotel, London. But he thought of Gothic as a “style” and his
