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The Manchester Square frontage. |
The Wallace Collection has — like practically everything else — been ‘discovered’ in recent years and pulled out from its backlands existence into the limelight. And Rick Mather’s conversion of its central court has significantly helped in making the place more attractive. Like the Soane Gallery, for example, it is now a popular venue. Since, however, these things are always relative, you will find the Wallace (and the Soane) relatively quiet compared with the national or similar places.
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The internal cafe /courtyard. |
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Colonel 44 Seifert’s Centre Point building on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, W1, was in its day, notorious as an example of outrageous speculative greed. The ground level arrangements remain very unsatisfactory and await major urban renewal at this important road junction, but as memories fade and all architects acknowledge they are ‘commercial’, some have even started to enjoy Seifert’s load-bearing building envelope and many of his other London buildings. |
The Collection was bequested to the nation in 1897 and forms a fine collections of French 18th c. paintings, old masters, furniture and china, including Frans Hals’ Laughing Cavalier, all housed in a late C19 mansion in central London, formerly belonging to the Wallaces. Like most galleries, the Wallace was short of space and the kinds of facilities people now expect. But the building was without room for expansion. Mather came up with the idea of excavating the basement in order to create a new lecture theatre, educational facilities and gallery space. In addition he proposed to glaze over the house’s central courtyard to create a new, top-lit cafe. The outcome is not a Sackler or National Portrait Gallery with their entirely reinvented circulation patterns, but is nevertheless a very good example of the quiet updating of an important (and rather pleasant) London museum gallery.
St George, Bloomsbury is another fine 43 Hawksmoor design, dating from 171631. During 2006 it was still undergoing renovation but this should be complete by the time you read this. Site constraints foprced hawksmoor to locate the grand entrance portico on the south, street side as a piece of theatre, with the real original entrances at the tower — a feature, with its references to descriptions of the mausoleum at Halicarnassus, that is worth your attentions.