Robert
Adam in Edinburgh Centrepiece of north side of Charlotte Square Described below in chronological order: Click on photos to enlarge |
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No. 8 Queen Street is distinctively the work of Robert Adam, 1770-1 for Baron Orde. (Boswell wrote 'This respectable English judge will long be remembered in Scotland where he built an elegant house and lived in it magnificently.'). Working within the City's rules, he (Adam) used the long frontage for five generously spaced bays and exactly defined the proportions of the whole with the characteristic precision of Craigleith stone. Tripartite doorpiece with tiny guttae under the frieze, its smooth columns set against square-cut rustication which is separated by a Vitruvian scroll from the dead-flat upper wall. The mansard, but not the form of its windows, is original. ... |
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Register House, E end of
Princes Street. Robert Adam's long frontage with corner turrets stands
austerely elegant at the entry from the Old Town to the New. Begun in 1774
... a domed rotunda within a quadrangle ...
The basic formula is Palladian, a piano nobile over rusticated arches. The
novelty is in the simplicity of its treatment, e.g. the expanse of plain
wall between and above the upper windows, and the tall (but not giant)
Corinthian columns of the centrepiece repeated at the ends. This cool
authority is not Palladian but Neo-Classical in spirit, well attuned to
the strong quadrangular form of the whole. The grace-notes that
characterize Adam the decorator are few but telling, e.g. the fluted
frieze with paterae that becomes a single panel over the central order,
the chaste geometric turrets (miniatures of the main building), and the
little roundel of the Royal Arms (originally of Liardet's cement) fixed in
the pediment like a seal. ... |
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| The west side of Register House, and New Register House, set back behind Adam's building and really in West Register Street, was designed by Robert Matheson in his most accomplished Italianate manner in 1858-63 ... | ||||
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David Hume's Tomb. Old Calton Burying Ground ... The finest work is the David Hume Monument by Robert Adam, 1777, a grandly Roman cylinder of rough ashlar with a fluted frieze on the lower stage, a bold Doric entablature on the upper. Big urn in a niche above the doorpiece. Adam's preliminary sketches show that the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna was the starting point for his design. |
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Charlotte Square is the grand
finale of the First
New Town (map)
the last section to be built and the only one designed as a single unified
scheme. The architect was Robert Adam (design 1791).
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Centrepiece with four pairs of attached columns (Adam's own version of Corinthian), the ground floor breaking forward beneath each outer pair to unite the inner pairs whose frieze of inverted garlands is interrupted by a plain panel at the very centre. Statues were meant to stand on the pediment. Only the centre bay of the ground floor is arched. At the first floor, single windows alternating with overarched tripartite windows like those of the pavilions; the sidelights of the outer two were built up in the C19. ... |
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East elevation. The E has overarched first-floor windows linked with a fluted frieze, and on the chimney-head, flanked by balustrades, a serpentine fluted panel like a Roman sarcophagus; not very well related to the main front, but entirely in the spirit of late Adam. The execution at least was by Alexander Stevens, who built the whole E pavilion. |
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| West Side of Charlotte Square. Adam's 1791 design for two identical blocks each side of St George's church (below) was largely carried out after 1803, when the buyers of the feus were allowed to have taller windows than those shown by Adam - a privilege already given to the feuars of the S and E sides (below). Each block is a short palace-front. The end pavilions are variants of those on the N side with narrower pilasters (Ionic this time) and rectangular ground-floor windows. Attached Ionic columns on the five-bay centrepiece, its wide middle bay with a giant first-floor tripartite window under a segmental fan of glass. Below, a Roman Doric porch ... Deviations from the Adam design as regards doors and windows are quite eclipsed by what has happened to the roof-line: the pyramid roofs at the centre and ends are lost in a continuous ridge which was broken by early C20 attics each side of the church and by clumsy additions on Nos. 15-16. ... | ||||
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| West Register
House, originally St. George's church, in the centre of the west
side of Charlotte Square. Not begun until 1811, Robert Reid adopting
Adam's 1791 scheme of portico, dome and flanking pavilions, but making it
bolder in mass and simpler in detail - the latter no doubt in the cause of
economy. ... Reid's dome is a slim, Neo-Classical edition of the
dome of St. Paul's (though clad in green copper), complete with a tempietto
lantern. ... The rear elevation to Randolph Place is impressively simple, with a Venetian window and lunette above, and shows that the interior was of Greek-cross plan. ... |
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| South Side of the Square. A repeat of the N side with larger windows and no sphinxes on the end pavilions, but the tripartite windows in the centrepiece are intact. ... | ||||
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East Side of the Square. A lower-key version of the W side, designed without the central porches and tripartite windows but the centrepiece supposed to have an attic storey with a large lunette window, the attic storey was omitted when Robert Reid redesigned the centrepieces in 1810. ... For more information on Charlotte Square, see the Pevsner publication above. Alternatively, essay here by Julian Small. |
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| Also by
Robert Adam on this website: University of Edinburgh - Old College |
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| Links: The Architecture of Robert Adam Impressively comprehensive website, including extensive essays on the buildings above, with illustrations Full list of works by the Adam family. |
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| Map (searchable) | ||||
