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Relations and Reflections to the Eye and Understanding: Architectural Models and the Rebuilding of the Royal Exchange, 1839–44

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2017

M. J. Wells
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Abstract

Historians have overlooked the ways in which architects perceived and used models during the nineteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of documentary sources, as well as drawings, prints and a surviving model, this essay examines how architectural models were deployed in the competition for the Royal Exchange and its design and construction (1839–44). Many figures saw models as important arbiters in choosing designs and, after the initial competition process, C.R. Cockerell and William Tite demonstrated the use of models as poetic and rhetoric tools in architectural practice. Drawing especially on the example of Tite's model of the Royal Exchange portico, which survives at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the essay discusses how architectural models played an important role in the social activities surrounding the profession including ceremonial events, conversazioni and international exhibitions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 60 , 2017 , pp. 219 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2017 

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References

NOTES

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16 The ground plan of the site issued for the competition offers the clearest depiction of this: MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 26 March 1839, Instructions to Architects, p. 4.

17 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 26 March 1839.

18 London, London Metropolitan Archives [hereafter ‘LMA’], CLA/062/04/019, Royal Exchange: Extracts and Reports, ‘Proceedings Connected with the Rebuilding of the Royal Exchange, 1838–1844’ [hereafter ‘Proceedings’], 26 March 1839.

19 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 26 March 1839.

20 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 24 April 1839, letter from T.L. Donaldson to the Joint Gresham Committee; ‘Paper read by W. Tite, esq., President of the Architectural Society, at the Last Soiree of the Season, 1839’, The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal, 2 (July 1839), pp. 242–43.

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28 For a rough plan of the exhibition and Gwilt's initial comments see LMA, CLC/521/MS04952, ‘Gwilt Papers’, 11 September 1839, ff. 11r–12v.

29 LMA, ‘Proceedings’, minute of a meeting held on 5 November 1839.

30 LMA, ’ Proceedings’, minute of a meeting held on 14 November 1839.

31 BAL, CoC/1/31: C.R. Cockerell Royal Academy lecture notes, 20 January 1848, ff. iv–v.

32 LMA, CLA/062/04/019, Royal Exchange: Extracts and Reports, ‘Proceedings’, minute of a meeting held on 5 November 1839.

33 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 3 February 1840.

34 RIBA, BAL, VOL/77, ‘Reminiscences’, f.42.

35 LMA, CLA/062/04/019, Royal Exchange: Extracts and Reports, ‘Proceedings’, minute of a meeting held on 11 February 1840.

36 RIBA, BAL, VOL/77, `Reminiscences’, ff. 42–43.

37 LMA, CLC/521/MS04952, ‘Gwilt Papers’, 28 September 1839, f. 17v.

38 LMA, CLC/521/MS04952, ‘Gwilt Papers’, undated, f. 27r.

39 London, Royal Institute of British Architects, Drawings Collection, SC88/15(13): C.R. Cockerell, preliminary studies for competition design for the Royal Exchange, perspective sketch of interior courtyard looking east.

40 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 28 April 1840. Letter from C.R. Cockerell to the Joint Gresham Committee.

41 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 28 April 1840. Letter from William Tite to the Joint Gresham Committee.

42 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 28 April 1840.

43 BAL. CoC/3/16: ‘Copy of C R Cockerell's report to the Committee of the Gresham Trustees for carrying into execution the rebuilding of the Royal Exchange in London, 4 May 1840’, f. 1v.

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46 £400 in 1840 was worth approximately £24,430 in 2010. As a point of comparison, in 2010 a professionally made 4.5m long architectural model, in painted timber and perspex of a site in central London at 1:50 scale, cost approximately £20,000.

47 BAL, VOL/77, ‘Reminiscences’, f. 43.

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52 This occurred in a model of Langton House produced for Cockerell in 1825. See: Knox, ‘Cockerell's Model for Langton’, p. 66.

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56 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 14 May 1840; 10 June 1840.

57 BAL, VOL/77, ‘Reminiscences’, f. 43.

58 ‘New Royal Exchange’, Morning Chronicle, 22 May 1840, p. 4.

59 Ibid., p. 4.

60 Ibid., p. 4.

61 Ibid., p. 4.

62 RIBA, BAL, vol/77, `Reminiscences’, f. 53, newspaper cutting on far left of sheet: Leader, Globe, 3 June 1840.

63 BAL, vol/77, `Reminiscences’, f. 50.

64 BAL, vol/77, `Reminiscences’, f. 53, newspaper cutting on centre left of sheet: ‘New Royal Exchange’, Globe, 3 June 1840.

65 In particular see: Quatremère de Quincy, ‘On Effect in Architecture’, The Architectural Magazine, 3.26 (April 1836), pp. 144–49.

66 RIBA, BAL, vol/77, `Reminiscences’, f. 53, newspaper cutting on centre left of sheet: ‘New Royal Exchange’, Globe, 3 June 1840.

67 Editorial, The Globe, 6 June 1840, p. 1.

68 ‘Anon. Letter’, The Globe, 6 June 1840, p. 5.

69 ‘A Constant Reader’, The Times, 9 June 1840, p. 3.

70 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 27 July 1840.

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72 Ibid., pp. 62–88.

73 Ibid., p. 77.

74 Ibid., p. 78

75 Ibid., p. 80

76 Ibid., p. 87.

77 Ibid., p. 88.

78 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 30 September 1840, letter from Tite to the Joint Gresham Committee.

79 Victoria and Albert Museum, Sculpture Department, museum number: 1069–1873.

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84 Wilton-Ely, ‘The Architectural Models of Sir John Soane’, p. 10.

85 This author is in the process of compiling a bibliographic index of architectural model-makers active between 1830 and 1920.

86 LMA, CLA/062/04/019, Royal Exchange: Extracts and Reports, ‘Proceedings’, 26 March 1839.

87 Ibid., minute of meeting held on 16 October 1840.

88 Ibid., minute of meeting held on 16 October 1840.

89 Ibid., minute of meeting held on 16 October 1840.

90 Ibid., minute of meeting held on 15 January 1841.

91 Ibid., minute of meeting held on 15 January 1841.

92 ‘Architectural Society’, The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal, 4 (4 June 1841), p. 237 Google Scholar.

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105 ‘Opening of the New Royal Exchange by Her Majesty’, Chelmsford Chronicle, 1 November 1844, p. 2.

106 ‘The New Royal Exchange’, Illustrated London News, 9 November 1844, p. 292.

107 LMA, ‘Proceedings’, p. 67.

108 ‘Day, The Architectural Modeller’, The Builder, 7 October 1848, p. 490.

109 From 1831 to 1847 there were fifty-three architectural models exhibited at the Royal Academy. Then between 1848 and 1894 there were only four models exhibited: two in 1853, one in 1862 and another in 1866.

110 Flour, ‘On the Formation of a National Museum of Architecture’, pp. 229–34.

111 At present this author is working on a history of architectural models and their exhibition in nineteenth-century Britain.

112 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851: Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, 4 vols (London, 1851) 2, p. 830Google Scholar, no. 161A.

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