ABSTRACT
Between the 1890s and thc 1920s, English architecture is a stylistie freefor-all, Gothic is petering out, but 'modernism' is not yet in, There is a jingoistie dislike for alien influences, but no recognizable English style, Neoclassic comes in all flavours, and London be comes a City of Beautiful Nonsense, Nonnan Shaw's New Scotland Yard (1891) is an Anglo-Duteh castle masqucrading as a police station; ßentley's Westminster Cathedral (1895) is Byzantine; the Old Bailey (1900) is ponderous baroque, Mewes and Davis show a more elegant Beaux Arts dassicism in the Ritz Hotel (1903), London's first steel-framed building, but looking as if its stonework could stand up without the stccl, which in fact it could, The parvenu shopkeeper adopts the colossal scale hitherto reserved for grimt publie buildings, in Selfridge's store (1907); the Grand Manner survives in Aston Webb's new front for Buckingham Palace and the Admiralty Areh (1910), Ralph Knott's County Hall (1912), and Burnet's extensions to the British Museum, Interspersed betwccn these misecllaneous monuments are examples of 'Hampton Court Wrcnaissance', the red briek and terracotta gables of 'Pont Street Duteh', and a few ineursions of art nouveau,
In this situation a perspeetor willing and able to take on all corners needed to be uncommonly versatile, By the turn of the century the full-time, independent specialist was emerging, For even a modest building project, a perspective had become almost obligatory; the dient cxpected it; half-tone reproduetion led to the much wider illustration of new work in the popular as weil as the technical press, Moreover, no architect could be confident of having made the grade until his work was shown in the Architecture Room at the Summer Exhibition at the RA, Despite the small proportion of the year' s buildings that could be shown, and the few that deserved to be. this moderate sized room had an appreciable influenee. It had aself-perpetuating elfeet both on design and on presentation. The obvious way to ensure aceeptance was to submit the SOft of thing that thc hanging eommittee had favoured the ycar before. Naturally the favoured work was aeademie; it
would be iIIogical to object to that. for if it was good academic work the Academy was surely the proper place for it; jfit was bad. that was a different ground for complaint. It is odd that architects of a more original turn of mind. few as thcy may have been. did not organize a Salon des reruses. The understanding was (at latest by 190.3) that any architect member ofthe Academy was entitled to hang up to sL, works. immune from rejection. not perhaps by rule. but by custom. A perspeetor commissioned by a mcmber. knowing that the work was certain to be shown. would naturally make a big drawing. The one or two architect members wh 0 arranged the hanging were hardly Iikelyto give the best positions to outsiders. Thus relatively little space was left for the mortals. who if they knew the ropes would submit small drawings that might fill odd gaps.
