The Adam family

THE road to London runs through Rome. Or so it did for Robert Adam, who left his native Scotland (and a place in the family’s established, but regional practice) for a European Grand Tour that eventually propelled him to worldwide architectural glory. Adam headed to Italy in 1754, at the age of 26, and became part of an international circle that included architectural designer Charles-Louis Clérisseau and artist and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi. He had ambition—‘Scotland is but a narrow place,’ he once wrote, revealing his desire for ‘a greater, more extensive and more honourable scene’—and the determination to pursue it, even when this required a rather elastic relationship with the truth: cultivating for a time the image of the distinguished dilettante, he embellished his stories with the odd, well- timed ‘lye’, as he openly admitted to his family.

By the time he returned to Britain in 1757, the Scottish squire had become a gentleman of the world and London was his proverbial oyster. Adam made neo-Classicism his own, replacing the (occasionally stuck-up) rigour of the Palladians with an elegant, imaginative style that fished from the wide pool of Classical and Renaissance architecture and combined different elements with gusto. From putti to Corinthian leaves, no classical motif was left behind, although his signature trait was perhaps movement, often created with the generous recourse to apses and pilasters.

One of his earliest projects was the extension of Thistleworth (now Gordon) House in St Margarets, then in Middlesex and today in Greater London, for Lt-Gen Humphrey Bland and his wife, Elizabeth: he designed a new wing, complete with spectacular drawing room, much of which surprisingly survived the building’s decades as a school (now, it’s once again a private home and Adam’s original designs for it are preserved at the Sir John Soane’s Museum).

Much of the Adam practice’s work centred on remodelling—not least at Syon Park in Brentford; at Kenwood House in Hampstead; and perhaps most gloriously at Osterley Park, in Isleworth, which he shaped over the course of 18 years into what Horace Walpole would call ‘the palace of palaces’, a triumph of soaring columns, delicate arabesques and maniacal attention to detail (Adam designed everything, down to the hangings of the state bed). But perhaps this tinkering with the designs of others was also a spur for Robert, who had by then been joined by his brothers James and William to launch new developments that he could truly call his own.

The deceptively understated houses in Marylebone’s Portland Place and Mansfield Street—where the graceful porticos and the delicate fanlights framing the entrance doors hint at the decorative splendour of the interiors —and Chandos House, where measured elegance belies a history of lavish excess as the Regency-era home of spendthrift Austrian ambassador and Hungarian prince Pál Antal Esterházy, are testament to the Adam brothers’ exceptional skill. However, their financial savvy didn’t quite match their visual flair. With their funds spread thinly across many schemes and expensive Chandos House taking years to find a buyer, the brothers found themselves facing ‘a very disagreeable pinch for money’ and, in 1785, had to sell some of their newly developed properties at a loss. It didn’t help that plans to build a grandiose mansion for the 3rd Duke of Portland never came to fruition (the Duke himself being in dire financial straits). But what had nearly tipped the practice over the edge was the Adelphi, an elegant terrace inspired by no less than Emperor Diocletian’s palace in Split, Croatia, in which aristocratic houses, often featuring ceilings frescoed by Adam’s Italian friend Antonio Zucchi, stood above ‘dark’ vaulted warehouses that would later beguile Charles Dickens.

Only the Royal Society of Arts in John Adam Street—a playful take on a Greek temple, all columns, friezes and pilasters— and a handful of other buildings remain of the original scheme. The rest was knocked down in 1936—including 4, Adelphi Terrace, home to the Temple of Health of master quack James Graham OWL (Oh Wonderful Love). There, he treated society’s rich and gullible with ‘aethereal balsams’, elixirs and even an ‘electrical throne’ that delivered mild shocks, before launching a ‘celestial bed’ where couples were sure to conceive ‘strong, healthful and most beautiful offspring’ for a mere 50 to 500 guineas a pop (about £7,500 to £76,000 in today’s money).

The buildings’ demolition was an inglorious, but fitting end to a scheme that had been ill-fated from the outset. The Adams’ plan for the Adelphi was bold: reclaim land flooded by the Thames at high tide and turn it into the definitive consecration of their success, down to the naming of the project (from the Greek for brothers) and of the streets it rose on, which were christened after various family members. Their execution was even bolder: as the Survey of London notes, the brothers began the works, in 1768, not only before securing Parliament’s permission to create the riverside banks (for which they faced bitter opposition from the City of London), but