Richard Norman Shaw

Richard Norman Shaw, 1898

Richard Norman Shaw (born May 7, 1831 in Edinburgh , † November 17, 1912 in London ) was an influential architect in Victorian Great Britain and an important exponent of the Queen Anne Style . He planned a large number of commercial and country houses, including such well-known buildings as the Scotland Yard Building from 1890, and with them decisively shaped the image of the “typically English” house.

life and work

Scotland Yard building, 1890 (center)

Little is known of Shaw's early years; When he was about sixteen, around 1849, he began an apprenticeship with William Burn , a London-based architect of Scottish descent. During this time, Shaw made the acquaintance of the architect William Eden Nesfield , who moved him to study medieval British architectural styles, from Gothic to Tudor. Another influence was Augustus Pugin , the pioneer of English neo-Gothic, who planned the Palace of Westminster , which was located in the new building after a fire . In the winter of 1852/1853 Shaw made detailed sketches of the unfinished building with a fellow student. At the same time, Shaw continued his education in the architectural faculty of the Royal Academy of Arts . After completing his training at Burn, Shaw received a scholarship from the Academy for a study trip to Italy and France to deepen his classical architecture studies.

The Savoy Theater in its original condition from 1881

After returning from his study tour in 1856, Shaw was asked by the Academy to publish the sketches made on the trip. They appeared in 1858 under the title Architectural Sketches from the Continent . In 1872 he was elected as an associate member of the Academy, five years later, in 1877, he became a full member. Only in 1901, at the age of 70, did he give up this dignity and burden.

Between 1857 and 1860 Shaw spent three more years as an apprentice at George Edmund Street , under whose guidance he carried out some building designs. Finally, in 1863, 14 years after starting his training, Shaw set up his own business as an architect. His first independent buildings were the Leyes Wood country houses in Surrey and Cragside, which he began in 1869 for Lord Armstrong and on which he worked for fifteen years. These houses were already characterized by the typical stylistic elements of Shaw: tall chimneys, diverse gables that were clad with different materials than the foundation walls, and the large entrance hall with the side staircase to the upper floors, which were later adopted in many English country houses and are still an important part of English country house architecture today.

On his first major urban contract, Shaw benefited from his studies during the construction of the Palace of Westminster: the city police headquarters in London had become too small and should receive an equally representative new building on a very representative property opposite the palace. Shaw's design for this building, the New Scotland Yard Building, which was realized between 1888 and 1890, envisaged the use of Portland stones in conjunction with red bricks. This combination was so much admired that this design was adopted many times, including by Shaw himself. For example, the Albion House , which Shaw built in Liverpool between 1896 and 1898 for a shipping company, is almost a copy of the Scotland Yard This striking style element was also incorporated into other representative buildings, for example the new building of the Savoy Theater from 1881.

6 Elerdale Road - his own town house

Shaw took a different approach to townhouse architecture. Here he tried to adopt some elements of the country house style that he had influenced, without letting the building stand out too much. Rather, he tried to make every single house appear individual in the street scene, but also to make the composition look harmonious. This is particularly evident in his buildings in Bedford Park , Britain's first garden city. Here Shaw was involved as one of the architects, and also planned and implemented the church building for this new district.

His last work, however, was again a representative urban building, namely the Piccadilly Hotel , built between 1905 and 1908 , with which the last remaining vacant lot during the renovation of Piccadilly Circus in London was closed from a large intersection into the square we know today.

Shaw died on November 17, 1912, at the age of 81, in his home on Elerdale Road, London. At that time, his influence on the architecture of his contemporaries had grown far beyond England to the mainland. Up until the beginning of the First World War, representative buildings were built according to his designs all over Europe; Especially in Wilhelmine Germany, his use of brick and cement strips in the design of important official buildings was imitated. In the United States, on the other hand, his use of turrets, canopies, gables and entrance halls in the construction of private houses was copied and modified to create his own styles.

Works

• Richard Norman Shaw: Architectural sketches from the continent . 1858.
• Richard Norman Shaw: Sketches for cottages and other buildings, Designed to be constructed in the patent cement slab system of WH Lascelles . 1882.
• Richard Norman Shaw: Architecture: A profession or an art: thirteen short essays on the qualifications and training of architects . 1892.

literature

• Andrew Saint: Richard Norman Shaw . Yale University Press, New Haven et al. a. 1976, ISBN 0-300-01955-6 .
• Robert Bartlett Harmon: English Elegance in the Domestic Architecture of Richard Norman Shaw: A Selected Bibliography . In: Architecture Series . Vance Bibliographies, Monticelli (Illinois) 1982, ISBN 0-88066-172-0 .

Web links

Commons : Richard Norman Shaw  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• British Parliament PDF on the two Parliament buildings Shaw built. (324 kB)
• Cragside, an early Shaw country house.
• Photos and sketches of some of Shaw's country houses.
• Some photos and data from Bedford Park.
• Townhouse views at VictorianWeb.org.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Description of the British Parliament on the New Scotland Yard buildings from 1888–1890, p.2 (PDF) ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.