The Donaldson's Hospital competition and the Palace of Westminster

Extract

Contemporaries regarded Donaldson’s Hospital as William Henry Playfair’s greatest work, a view the architect himself probably shared even though the effort of designing it cost him very dear. At first sight its richly towered and pinnacled profile and even bay design might seem to have owed something to Barry’s designs for the Palace of Westminster, but its building dates, 1842-52, are deceptive. The five years’ long competition which eventually led to Playfair’s appointment was initiated eighteen months earlier and the earliest submissions of 1834-35 had the same rich Tudor- Jacobean character as the executed building on an even more extensive scale. It was only as the competition progressed that parallels began to develop which were never lost on its promoters.