NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON Alfred Waterhouse’s masterpiece, the Natural History Museum (1873-80, referred to as NHM from now on), is a building in South Kensington. It was built during the Victorian Age when England, in-spite of all its social and economic problems, was becoming one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations of the time. In 1837, when Queen Victoria ascended the throne, the population of London was around two million. In 1901, when she died, the figure had reached somewhere around six and a half million.1 London was growing at a tremendous rate. It was the heart of a large colonial empire. Prince Albert was personally involved in encouraging the arts, sciences, industry, and addressing the large scale industrial reorganisation that London was witness to. His decisive role in promoting these activities in England is seen in the The Great Exhibition of 1851. The funds raised by this event were used in the planning of South Kensington, the area that is sometimes referred to as Albertopolis.2 What is greatly interesting about the NHM, apart from its architecture, is the long struggle it went through in order to be built the way it stands today. It is a great example to illustrate the condition of architecture in the Victorian society, when architecture had become the subject of widespread public discussion3, and very often it found itself stuck between two schools of thought. One advocated the use of the Classical Style (Italianate, Greek or Renaissance) and the other advocated the Gothic Style (Medieval or ‘pointed’), this is the ‘Battle of Styles’ as it is often called. The Whitehall buildings, especially the British Foreign Office, is the building discussed when this conflict is addressed. This instance saw the Classical style gaining victory over the Gothic, when Lord Palmerston insisted that the architect George Gilbert Scott, a ‘Gothicist’, build in the Classical style. The NHM is the mirror image of Foreign Offices in this respect, since it saw the Gothic style coming out as the victorious one. In 1863, a competition was organised for the design of the museum. Captain Francis Fowke won this competition,4 and his design was Classical. But in 1865, upon Fowke’s death, the project was handed over to Alfred Waterhouse, a ‘Gothicist’. This was possible largely due to the involvement of Richard Owen who was the brain behind the idea of the museum. Waterhouse along with Owen argued that the exterior of the building should reflect the interior, and so the façade needed to represent the birds and the animals that were to be housed inside. These kinds of figures were a feature of a Gothic building.5 Many terracotta animals and birds hence became a part of the ornament, some which are based on the illustrations from Darwin’s account of the Beagle voyage.6 The eastern side of the NHM shows extinct species whereas the western side shows the living species. The entire façade is clad in terracotta. When Waterhouse visited Amiens, he noted that he was struck by the terracotta work, by the way red brick was being used in bands to add colour, and this influence is seen in the NHM. The visitor enters through a doorway made in the Romanesque style that reminds of the Le Puy 1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6.
(Halliday, 2003, pg 9) Barber, E., 2014. Blue Guide: London. Blue Guides Limited, Somerset, London. Pg. 316 Many newspapers and magazines covered the new buildings that were being built – The Builder, The Field, The Times; all discussed these buildings. The RIBA was established in 1834. Architecture was thus becoming an area of discussion. the same architect who designed the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Albert Hall in close vicinity to the NHM in South Kensington See (Halliday, 2003) Owen had supervised the publication of this account and hence had an understanding of it.
MA History and Critical Thinking
Sunaina Shah
Architecture Knowledge and Writing
Cathedral in France, which Waterhouse visited in 1872 while he was working out the details for the building. These various aspects of the building and its stylistic adherence made it the centre of a lot of controversy. This is what makes it quite an example of the condition of the society – the growing strength of the empire reflecting in the fact that the museum artefacts grew so large in number that such a building needed to be conceived, the exposed steel in the interior showing the industrial advancement, the building being portrayed as a cathedral, a temple,7 connections to Darwin and his voyage, Prince Albert and the Great Exhibition, the ‘Battle of Styles’, and so many other aspects of the Victorian age, all seen coming together in this one building. Victorian architecture in this way is complex, but this complexity is what makes it rich and fascinating.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
7.
Halliday, S., 2003. Making the Metropolis: Creators of Victoria’s London. Breedon Books Publishing Company, Great Britain.
Kornwolf, J.D., 1975. High Victorian Gothic; Or, The Dilemma of Style in Modern Architecture. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34, 37–47.
Physick, J., 1982. The Victoria and Albert Museum: The History of its Building. Phaidon, Oxford
Porter, B., 2011. The Battle of the Styles: Society, Culture and the Design of the New Foreign Office, 1855-1861. Continuum International Publishing Group, New York.
The Times for example called it ‘A True Temple of Nature’. (Halliday, 2003, pg. 171)
MA History and Critical Thinking
Sunaina Shah
Architecture Knowledge and Writing