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Ovals, Squares, and Duodecagons
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15099 |
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THE ARTS
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4 / 1989 |
1,830 Words |
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Marcus Binney
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In London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, three great groups of city squares tell the story of the greatest contribution the British Isles have made to civilized urban living.
If you want to see London at its most beautiful and urbane, take a stroll through Belgravia in spring or autumn on a brilliant sunny morning. When the trees are in first or last leaf you can look across the squares and see the gleaming white or cream stucco terraces.
Of course, great squares and piazzas have been the focal points of towns since the earliest civilizations--whether for ceremonies and public gatherings or for markets. The particular British contribution has been to develop the city square for purely domestic use--with terrace houses taking the place of palaces, public buildings, temples, and churches.
Master Builders
Belgravia was laid out largely between 1825 and 1830 for Lord Grosvenor, by the greatest of the British master builders, Thomas Cubitt. Cubitt had the ingenious idea of using the spoil from the excavations of the London docks to raise the level of the marshy ground to the south of Hyde Park Corner. Thanks largely to Cubitt's acumen, the Grosvenors became so rich they had to be made Dukes. At the time, however, even the name Belgravia appeared so novel that the first letters sent there were forwarded to Vienna in the belief that it must, like Transylvania, be some remote province of the Hapsburg Empire.
The Grosvenors were determined to make Belgravia the grandest residential neighborhood in London. "Trade" was banned through much of the estate, as it is today in London's Royal Parks, where commercial vehicles may not pass. Old prints show the barriers that were used to control traffic, while shops were restricted to certain streets around the edges, and even today the pubs are tucked away in the mews, or in streets of former stables behind the big terraces.
Most of Belgravia's stucco is today painted white or cream, though experts now believe that London's stucco should properly be painted a stone color, as stucco was clearly intended in imitation of stone. It is a moot point: There is much to be said for the white, on a dull, gray day as well as a sunny one.
To enjoy the full architectural crescendo, I would begin in Chester Square, the most domestic of Belgravia's squares and the only one where a considerable number of houses remain in single family ownership. It has its own church, a high Victorian Gothic creation at the end, and immediate access to the delectable shops of Elizabeth Street.
Eaton Square, beyond, is London's largest--really, three squares set side by side, with the Kings Road (originally His Majesty's private highway to the palace at Hampton Court) cutting through the middle. The three terraces on either side are each marshaled as a single composition, like a great palace front, interrupted only by the columned porches that mark the individual houses. In one terrace, even these are merged in a colonnade running the length of the block, so virtually no division is apparent between the houses. It is worth making the full round of the square, not only to decide which terrace is most successful, but also to admire the
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