ABSTRACT
In 1810 Aberdeen was ready to realize its design for the two New Streets, Union Street and King Street by actually building houses (Fletcher 1807). The only requirements for the design of the individual houses were those contained in the feuing conditions, effectively to emulate 55-8 Castle Street, and to observe regularity in the compartments. All houses in Union Street and elsewhere followed suit, beginning with 57-65: often, as at the new junction of Union Street and Shiprow the houses add the curved-corner so loved by the Police Commissioners otherwise following the Athenaeum pattern. In King Street there was the added guidance of the composed block where half of the southern pavilion, also fronting the Castlegate, was already in place and its southern neighbour was under construction. Even here the pattern is followed and so in due course the other houses of the terrace. The memory of that design and the desire for a composed block (never mind a merely regular compartment) was a very strong one, and is a recurring theme in the building of the street throughout the 19th century. There seems also to have been the conscious desire in Aberdeen as a whole to make Union Street the Finest in Scotland by delivering as much of the Young scheme as possible. The dip in the level is ameliorated in the execution of the many different projects during the early 19th century so as almost to be unrecognizable. As the street dips, the building to either side grows taller to make up the apparent difference in level overall. In Union Street West the houses of the regular compartments were lower, often by two stories. The tension between plain houses and those dressed in the classical orders adds surprising interest; this was not called for, nor excluded, by the Trustees, but soon there are calls (if somewhat partial) for more architecturally elaborate designs (Wilson 1822).
