Morgan had also acquired a major part of Sir John Evans's coin collection, which was later sold to the museum by his son John Pierpont Morgan Junior in 1915. In 1918, because of the threat of wartime bombing, some objects were evacuated via the London Post Office Railway to Holborn, the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth) and a country house near Malvern. On the return of antiquities from wartime storage in 1919 some objects were found to have deteriorated. A conservation laboratory was set up in May 1920 and became a permanent department in 1931. It is today the oldest in continuous existence.
New century, new building (1900–1925)
British Museum
British Museum | New century, new building (1900–1925)
A conservation laboratory Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Northern wing The first stage was the construction of the northern wing beginning 1906.
what advantages does england seem to have to start the industrial revolution
user
It transformed  its society into the world's first industrialised nation.
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which age can its history be traced back to?
user
780,000 years ago
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what are some of the rivers found in this country?
user
Thames, Mersey, Tyne, Severn etc
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any well-known museums here?
user
London's British Museum
assistant
where is this museum located?
user
Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom
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who was the founder?
user
Sir Hans Sloane
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which was the new building constructed at the start of the 1900s?
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Morgan had also acquired a major part of Sir John Evans's coin collection, which was later sold to the museum by his son John Pierpont Morgan Junior in 1915. In 1918, because of the threat of wartime bombing, some objects were evacuated via the London Post Office Railway to Holborn, the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth) and a country house near Malvern. On the return of antiquities from wartime storage in 1919 some objects were found to have deteriorated. A conservation laboratory was set up in May 1920 and became a permanent department in 1931. It is today the oldest in continuous existence.
British Museum | New century, new building (1900–1925)
In 1923, the British Museum welcomed over one million visitors.
British Museum | New century, new building (1900–1925)
By the last years of the 19th century, The British Museum's collections had increased to the extent that its building was no longer large enough. In 1895 the trustees purchased the 69 houses surrounding the museum with the intention of demolishing them and building around the west, north and east sides of the museum. The first stage was the construction of the northern wing beginning 1906. All the while, the collections kept growing. Emil Torday collected in Central Africa, Aurel Stein in Central Asia, D.G. Hogarth, Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence excavated at Carchemish. Around this time, the American collector and philanthropist J Pierpont Morgan donated a substantial number of objects to the museum, including William Greenwell's collection of prehistoric artefacts from across Europe which he had purchased for £10,000 in 1908.
British Museum | New century, new building (1900–1925)
The opening of the forecourt in 1852 marked the completion of Robert Smirke's 1823 plan, but already adjustments were having to be made to cope with the unforeseen growth of the collections. Infill galleries were constructed for Assyrian sculptures and Sydney Smirke's Round Reading Room, with space for a million books, opened in 1857. Because of continued pressure on space the decision was taken to move natural history to a new building in South Kensington, which would later become the British Museum of Natural History. Roughly contemporary with the construction of the new building was the career of a man sometimes called the "second founder" of the British Museum, the Italian librarian Anthony Panizzi.
British Museum | Collecting from the wider world (1850–1875)
Owen saw that the natural history departments needed more space, and that implied a separate building as the British Museum site was limited. Land in South Kensington was purchased, and in 1864 a competition was held to design the new museum. The winning entry was submitted by the civil engineer Captain Francis Fowke, who died shortly afterwards. The scheme was taken over by Alfred Waterhouse who substantially revised the agreed plans, and designed the façades in his own idiosyncratic Romanesque style which was inspired by his frequent visits to the Continent. The original plans included wings on either side of the main building, but these plans were soon abandoned for budgetary reasons.
Natural History Museum, London | Planning and architecture of new building
Several of modern London's major museums were constructed during the 19th century, including the British Museum (built 1823-1852), The National Gallery (built 1832-8), the National Portrait Gallery (founded 1856), and the Tate Britain, which opened in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. The British Museum had been established by Act of Parliament in 1753, and housed since that time in the 17th century Montagu House in Bloomsbury. With the donation of the King's Library in 1822, which comprised some 120,000 manuscripts, pamphlets, and drawings assembled by the late George III, a major extension of the Museum was needed.
19th-century London | Museums
The space these would have occupied are now taken by the Earth Galleries and Darwin Centre. Work began in 1873 and was completed in 1880. The new museum opened in 1881, although the move from the old museum was not fully completed until 1883. Both the interiors and exteriors of the Waterhouse building make extensive use of architectural terracotta tiles to resist the sooty atmosphere of Victorian London, manufactured by the Tamworth-based company of Gibbs and Canning Limited. The tiles and bricks feature many relief sculptures of flora and fauna, with living and extinct species featured within the west and east wings respectively.
Natural History Museum, London | Planning and architecture of new building
Following a fire in those buildings, the collection was moved in 1885, this time to the Bethnal Green Museum. This location was ultimately unsuitable due to its distance from the West End, condensation and lack of waterproofing. Following calls for a new location to be found, the government accepted an offer of funds from the philanthropist William Henry Alexander. Alexander donated £60,000 followed by another £20,000, and also chose the architect, Ewan Christian. The government provided the new site, St Martin's Place, adjacent to the National Gallery, and £16,000. The buildings, faced in Portland stone, were constructed by Shillitoe & Son.
National Portrait Gallery, London | History and buildings
During the 1830s and 1840s the British Museum had been extensively re-built to designs approved by trustees and built by the architect, Sir Robert Smirke. However, as work progressed it became evident that public interest in the museum's collections and library could not be adequately accommodated within the designs that had been approved. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1848 to look into the whole question, and various schemes to convert the open inner courtyard into exhibition space were submitted during 1849, including one by Hosking for a circular gallery modeled on the Pantheon in Rome. Hosking's entry received professional acclaim for the concept and quality of the design; his proposal becoming illustrated in "The Builder" magazine during the following year.
William Hosking | British Museum
In 1802 a buildings committee was set up to plan for expansion of the museum, and further highlighted by the donation in 1822 of the King's Library, personal library of King George III's, comprising 65,000 volumes, 19,000 pamphlets, maps, charts and topographical drawings. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an eastern extension to the museum "... for the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it ..." and put forward plans for today's quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the King's Library Gallery began in 1823.
British Museum | Growth and change (1800–1825)
In the early 1850s the museum library was in need of a larger reading room and the then-Keeper of Printed Books, Antonio Panizzi, following an earlier competition idea by William Hosking, came up with the thought of a round room in the central courtyard. The building was designed by Sydney Smirke and was constructed between 1854 and 1857. The building used cast iron, concrete, glass and the latest technology in ventilation and heating. The dome, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, has a diameter of 42.6 metres but is not technically free standing: constructed in segments on cast iron, the ceiling is suspended and made out of papier-mâché.
British Museum Reading Room | Construction and design
Construction lasted from 1906 to 1914; in 1910, King Edward VII died, and the Edward VII Galleries were opened by King George V and Queen Mary in 1914. The prestigious work on the British Museum brought in new commissions for Burnet's practice: the General Buildings in Aldwych (1909–11) and the Kodak Building on Kingsway (1910–11). This latter project was a significant milestone for the firm; the American client, George Eastman, was not afraid of a modern design, and after rejecting several design proposals drawn up by Burnet, eventually selected a design submitted by Thomas S. Tait which was to serve as a model for future developments by the firm.
John James Burnet | British Museum
The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element, and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library.
British Museum | Foundation (1753)
These included Grosvenor House and Dorchester House on Park Lane, both of which were rebuilt as luxury hotels (the Grosvenor House Hotel and The Dorchester), Devonshire House, Chesterfield House and Norfolk House. After the exhibition of Art Deco architecture at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, London architects began to adopt the sleek new style with fervor. Art Deco became the dominant style for new construction in London through the late 1930s, which represented a forward-thinking and innovative new aesthetic in contrast to London's ubiquitous Victorian architecture. Major examples built during this period were media headquarters on Fleet Street, the Daily Telegraph building (1928) and the Daily Express Building (1932), in addition to the BBC Broadcasting House on Langham Place.
History of London (1900–1939) | Architecture and Building
However, he decided that it would diminish the significance of his new museum were it not to cover the whole of nature, and when the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction was convened in 1870 to review the national policy on scientific education Owen successfully lobbied for the museum to retain its botanical collections. In 1873 construction finally began on the new museum building.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
Montagu House was demolished and the quadrangular current building, with its imposing Greek Revival façade designed by Sir Robert Smirke, rose gradually through 1857, with the East Wing the first to be completed in 1828. The Round Reading Room, which was built to occupy the vacant courtyard behind the main building, featured the second largest dome in the world when it was finished (140 feet in diameter). By 1878 the Reading Room contained 1.5 million printed volumes across some 25 miles of shelves. The great complex of museums at South Kensington began with the purchase of a vast tract of land (known as Albertopolis) at the instigation of the Prince Consort and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.
19th-century London | Museums
The Greek Revival façade facing Great Russell Street is a characteristic building of Sir Robert Smirke, with 44 columns in the Ionic order high, closely based on those of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Asia Minor. The pediment over the main entrance is decorated by sculptures by Sir Richard Westmacott depicting "The Progress of Civilisation", consisting of fifteen allegorical figures, installed in 1852. The construction commenced around the courtyard with the East Wing (The King's Library) in 1823–1828, followed by the North Wing in 1833–1838, which originally housed among other galleries a reading room, now the Wellcome Gallery.
British Museum | Building
The museum became a construction site as Sir Robert Smirke's grand neo-classical building gradually arose. The King's Library, on the ground floor of the East Wing, was handed over in 1827, and was described as one of the finest rooms in London. Although it was not fully open to the general public until 1857, special openings were arranged during The Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1840, the museum became involved in its first overseas excavations, Charles Fellows's expedition to Xanthos, in Asia Minor, whence came remains of the tombs of the rulers of ancient Lycia, among them the Nereid and Payava monuments.
British Museum | The largest building site in Europe (1825–1850)
The extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. However, following the founding of the National Gallery, London in 1824, the proposed Picture Gallery was no longer needed, and the space on the upper floor was given over to the Natural history collections.
British Museum | Growth and change (1800–1825)
In 1907, draughtsman Norman Aitken Dick joined the partnership, and around this time the Glasgow office was designing some of its most prestigious and pioneering buildings, including the Alhambra Theatre Glasgow which was in the Modern Movement and an early example of a steel-framed building (which construction he employed the following year for the Kodak Building, London) and the Sick Children's Hospital at Yorkhill. Burnet continued his study visits to the United States in 1908 and 1910, looking at the design of warehouses, hospitals, museums and galleries.
John James Burnet | British Museum
By 1893 the first director was appointed to oversee these developing science collections, which would become the core of the Science Museum upon its founding as a separate entity in 1909. In the meantime, the decision was made to relocate the natural history specimen collections of the British Museum to a separate and dedicated facility, the Natural History Museum, the building of which lasted between 1873 and 1884. Other enterprises were granted parcels of land on the active patronage of the Commission, which aimed to fulfill Prince Albert's vision. By the end of the century the museums were complemented by the Royal Albert Hall (opened in 1871), the Royal College of Music (opened 1894), and the Imperial Institute (opened 1893).
19th-century London | Museums
In 1858 a group of 120 leading scientists wrote to Benjamin Disraeli, at the time the Chancellor of the Exchequer, complaining about the inadequacy of the existing building for displaying and storing the natural history collections. In January 1860, the trustees of the museum approved Owen's proposal. (Only nine of the British Museum's fifty trustees supported Owen's scheme, but 33 trustees failed to turn up to the meeting. As a consequence, Owen's plan passed by nine votes to eight.) Owen envisaged a huge new building of for the natural history collections, capable of exhibiting the largest specimens. Owen felt that exhibiting large animals would attract visitors to the new museum; in particular, he hoped to collect and display whole specimens of large whales while he still had the opportunity, as he felt that the larger species of whale were on the verge of extinction.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
Later additions to the west came more steadily but maintained the coherence of the building by mirroring Barry's cross-axis plan to the east. The use of dark marble for doorcases was also continued, giving the extensions a degree of internal consistency with the older rooms. The classical style was still in use at the National Gallery in 1929, when a Beaux-Arts style gallery was built, funded by the art dealer and Trustee Lord Duveen. However, it was not long before the 20th-century reaction against Victorian attitudes became manifest at the Gallery. From 1928 to 1952 the landing floors of Taylor's entrance hall were relaid with a new series of mosaics by Boris Anrep, who was friendly with the Bloomsbury Group.
National Gallery | 20th century: modernisation versus restoration
The profits from the Exhibition were put toward the purchase of the land, which was intended to host a complex of cultural, scientific and educational institutions. The first of these was the South Kensington Museum (now known as the Victoria & Albert Museum), which opened to the public in 1856. The South Kensington Museum at that time inhabited the 'Brompton Boilers' building designed by William Cubitt, and consisted of the collections of manufactures and decorative art from the Crystal Palace Exhibition and the collections from the Museum of Ornamental Art, previously held in Marlborough House. In 1899 Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone for the current building, designed by Sir Aston Webb, and christened the official change of name to the "Victoria & Albert" Museum.
19th-century London | Museums
The only vacant space for this large library was a room originally intended for manuscripts, between the Front Entrance Hall and the Manuscript Saloon. The books remained here until the British Library moved to St Pancras in 1998.
British Museum | The largest building site in Europe (1825–1850)
The Hotel Russell in Russell Square (1900) has a large facade in buff terracotta, including life-size statues of "British queens" by Henry Charles Fehr, sculpted coats of arms and other large ornamental elements. This was somewhat old-fashioned for 1900, and the new taste for Art Nouveau favoured the glazed white "Carrara" material, which remained popular through to the Art Deco of the 1930s, often combined with bespoke decoration in bright colours, as at the Turkey Cafe in Leicester, also of 1900.
Royal Doulton | Architectural ceramics
Work was also progressing on the northern half of the West Wing (The Egyptian Sculpture Gallery) 1826–1831, with Montagu House demolished in 1842 to make room for the final part of the West Wing, completed in 1846, and the South Wing with its great colonnade, initiated in 1843 and completed in 1847, when the Front Hall and Great Staircase were opened to the public. The museum is faced with Portland stone, but the perimeter walls and other parts of the building were built using Haytor granite from Dartmoor in South Devon, transported via the unique Haytor Granite Tramway. In 1846 Robert Smirke was replaced as the museum's architect by his brother Sydney Smirke, whose major addition was the Round Reading Room 1854–1857; at in diameter it was then the second widest dome in the world, the Pantheon in Rome being slightly wider.
British Museum | Building
The main block and facade of the British Museum, Bloomsbury (1823–46). This is Smirke's largest and best known building. In 1820, in his role as architect to the Office of Works, Smirke was invited to redesign the museum, although the complete design dates from 1823, and was for a building surrounding a large central courtyard with a grand south front, given the limited funds the work was divided into phases. It is built of brick with the visible facades cased in Portland stone. The first part to be constructed was the "King's Library" of 1823–1828, which forms the east wing.
Robert Smirke (architect) | British Museum
In 1823 Robert Smirke was hired to design a replacement building, the first parts of which opened in 1827 and which was completed in the 1840s.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
The New Gallery was founded in 1888 by J. Comyns Carr and Charles Edward Hallé. Carr and Hallé had been co-directors of Sir Coutts Lindsay's Grosvenor Gallery, but resigned from that troubled gallery in 1887. The building was designed by Edward Robert Robson FSA, and constructed in little more than three months to ensure that it could open in the summer of 1888. The gallery was built on the site of an old fruit market. Existing cast-iron columns supporting the roof were encased with marble to give the impression of "massive marble shafts" topped with gilded Greek capitals. The architrave, frieze, and cornices above the columns were covered with platinum leaf.
New Gallery (London) | The gallery period
The Museum was originally built in 1905 as a free library, with £8000 of funding from Andrew Carnegie. The architect was Henry Thomas Hare.
Southend Central Museum | The building
Most of the current building dates to the 18th and 19th centuries.
Braslovče | Introduction
In adopting such styles, British architects evoked hallowed English Baroque structures like St. Paul's Cathedral and Inigo Jones' Banqueting House. Municipal, government, and ecclesiastical buildings of the years 1900–1914 avidly adopted Neo-Baroque architecture for large construction works like the Old Bailey (1902), County Hall (begun in 1911), the Port of London Authority building (begun 1912), the War Office (1906), and Methodist Central Hall (1911). The most impressive commercial buildings constructed during the Edwardian era include the famous Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly (1906), Norman Shaw's Piccadilly Hotel (1905), Selfridges department store (1909), and Whiteleys department store (1911). All of these were built in variations of Neoclassicism: Beaux-Arts, Neo-Baroque, or Louis XVI.
Architecture of London | Edwardian Architecture (1901–1914)
Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster. During the course of his lifetime, and particularly after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter, Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities and, not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation, for a sum of £20,000. At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas.
British Museum | Sir Hans Sloane
The departure of the British Library to a new site at St Pancras, finally achieved in 1998, provided the space needed for the books. It also created the opportunity to redevelop the vacant space in Robert Smirke's 19th-century central quadrangle into the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court – the largest covered square in Europe – which opened in 2000. The ethnography collections, which had been housed in the short-lived Museum of Mankind at 6 Burlington Gardens from 1970, were returned to new purpose-built galleries in the museum in 2000. The museum again readjusted its collecting policies as interest in "modern" objects: prints, drawings, medals and the decorative arts reawakened.
British Museum | The Great Court emerges (1975–2000)
Sir John served an apprenticeship as a draper, eventually rising to become chairman of the Dickins & Jones department store in London, to which he gave his name. The Institute was designed by Roland Lloyd Jones and completed in 1905 at a cost of £20,000. The neo-Tudor style two-storey building, complete with clock tower, is an unusually lofty design for a location often buffeted by strong south-westerly winds. The Institute appeared on the BBC2 programme, "Restoration", in 2006.
Newborough, Anglesey | History
The natural history collections were an integral part of the British Museum until their removal to the new British Museum of Natural History in 1887, nowadays the Natural History Museum. With the departure and the completion of the new White Wing (fronting Montague Street) in 1884, more space was available for antiquities and ethnography and the library could further expand. This was a time of innovation as electric lighting was introduced in the Reading Room and exhibition galleries. The William Burges collection of armoury was bequeathed to the museum in 1881. In 1882, the museum was involved in the establishment of the independent Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) the first British body to carry out research in Egypt.
British Museum | Scholarship and legacies (1875–1900)
In 1953, the museum celebrated its bicentenary. Many changes followed: the first full-time in-house designer and publications officer were appointed in 1964, the Friends organisation was set up in 1968, an Education Service established in 1970 and publishing house in 1973. In 1963, a new Act of Parliament introduced administrative reforms. It became easier to lend objects, the constitution of the board of trustees changed and the Natural History Museum became fully independent. By 1959 the Coins and Medals office suite, completely destroyed during the war, was rebuilt and re-opened, attention turned towards the gallery work with new tastes in design leading to the remodelling of Robert Smirke's Classical and Near Eastern galleries.
British Museum | A new public face (1950–1975)
Originating from collections within the British Museum, the landmark Alfred Waterhouse building was built and opened by 1881 and later incorporated the Geological Museum. The Darwin Centre is a more recent addition, partly designed as a modern facility for storing the valuable collections.
Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
Uniquely for the time, Waterhouse's building was faced inside and out with terracotta, the first building in England to be so designed; although expensive to build, this was resistant to the acid rain of heavily polluted London, allowed the building to be washed clean, and also allowed it to be decorated with intricate mouldings and sculptures. A smaller North Hall, immediately north of the Central Hall, would be used for exhibits specifically relating to British natural history. On 18 April 1881 the new British Museum (Natural History) opened to the public. As relocating exhibits from Bloomsbury was a difficult and time-consuming process, much of the building remained empty at the time the museum opened.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Waterhouse's building
The building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, and is built of terracotta manufactured by Gibbs and Canning Limited of Tamworth (c.1878) — two of the same driving forces behind the Natural History Museum in London.
Prudential plc | Early history
At the beginning of the 20th century, the location of the Institution, in Finsbury Circus was becoming increasingly inconvenient for members. In 1908, the Board of Management announced that costly repairs to the buildings were required and in 1909 the Institution came under the purview of the Royal Commission on University Education in London. The Royal Commission proposed that the building be used as a School of Oriental Studies. In 1912 the London Institution closed, the building having been transferred to H.M. Office of Works. The Library of over 100,000 volumes was divided between the British Museum (now British Library), the Guildhall Library (for works of London topographic interest) and the new School.
London Institution | End
Between 1909 and 1915, W. H. St J. Hope, W. Hawley and D.H. Montgomerie excavated the site for the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Old Sarum | Modern period
It was therefore a great surprise when he learnt that the museum was indeed commissioning a building for the quadrangle - with the dome, circular plan and other features that had distinguished his proposal - but did not envisage crediting him for the competition idea. Only one architectural design drawn up by the Professor during the 1850s had led to a building being constructed. This was for an office for Messrs. Berens on the south side of Canon Street. Somewhat piqued, Hosking set out his concerns in a book: "Some observations upon the recent addition of the Reading-room to the British Museum; with plans, sections and other illustrative documents" (London: Stanford, 1858) that aimed to put the record straight from his perspective.
William Hosking | British Museum
R. Cockerell. The foundation stone of the new building was laid by Gilbert Ainslie in 1837. The museum opened in 1848. The Palladian Entrance Hall, by Edward Middleton Barry, was completed in 1875. A further large bequest was made to the University in 1912 by Charles Brinsley Marlay, including £80,000 and 84 paintings from his private collection. A two-storey extension to the south-east, paid for partly by the Courtauld family, was added in 1931, greatly expanding the space of the museum and allowing research teams to work on site. The museum buildings and, separately, the boundary along the street frontage, are Grade I listed.
Fitzwilliam Museum | Foundation and buildings
The current building was built 1893–95 and was designed in the Gothic revival style in brick and terracotta by W. D. Caröe. The original Corbett Road facade was asymmetic and a third gable was added after 1908 to make it symmetrical. More additions were made to the rear of the building in the early twentieth century. The library wing to the north-east designed by Verner Rees was built in 1939–40, and the garden wing designed by "Verner Rees, Laurence and Mitchell" in 1963. Alice Bruce who was the daughter of the founder and a leading educationalist was the President of the hall from 1929 to 1936.
Aberdare Hall | History
(It was reported that when the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction asked Owen how much space would be needed, he replied "I shall want space for seventy whales, to begin with".) In October 1861 Owen gave William Ewart Gladstone, the newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, a tour of the cramped natural history departments of the British Museum, to demonstrate how overcrowded and poorly lit the museum's galleries and storerooms were, and to impress on him the need for a much larger building. After much debate over a potential site, in 1864 the site formerly occupied by the 1862 International Exhibition in South Kensington was chosen.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
This Greek Revival style building sits at the heart of British academia in London's Bloomsbury. With its four vast wings, 43 Greek temples inspired columns, triangular pediment, and enormous steps, it's certainly not what you'd expect to see in central London. Its grandeur was designed to reflect all the 'wondrous objects housed inside' by the architect Sir Robert Smirke in 1823. It emulated classical Greek architecture – a style that had become increasingly popular since the 1750s when western Europeans 'rediscovered' ancient Greece.
British Museum Reading Room | Architecture
The university approved plans for the new building early in the 20th century; it was designed by Thomas Arthur Lodge (a leading Scottish architect) and Thomas Geoffry Lucas (an English architect and Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects), whose works included the original Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and St Bartholomew's Hospital, London respectively. A former student of the University of Leeds, Frank Parkinson, who was a successful British electrical engineer and businessman, most notable for early electric lighting installations, viewed the plans for the new building, and in 1936 was so impressed with the plan he offered to pay £200,000 towards the costs of the entrance hall and clock tower.
Parkinson Building | History
Francis Fowke, who had designed the buildings for the International Exhibition, was commissioned to build Owen's museum. In December 1865 Fowke died, and the Office of Works commissioned little-known architect Alfred Waterhouse, who had never previously worked on a building of this scale, to complete Fowke's design. Dissatisfied with Fowke's scheme, in 1868 Waterhouse submitted his own revised design, which was endorsed by the trustees. Owen, who considered animals more important than plants, was unhappy with the museum containing botanical specimens at all, and during the negotiations that led to the new building supported transferring the botanical collections to the new Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew to amalgamate the national collections of living and preserved plants.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
The foundation of the collection was that of the Ulster doctor Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), who allowed his significant collections to be purchased by the British Government at a price well below their market value at the time. This purchase was funded by a lottery. Sloane's collection, which included dried plants, and animal and human skeletons, was initially housed in Montagu House, Bloomsbury, in 1756, which was the home of the British Museum. Most of the Sloane collection had disappeared by the early decades of the nineteenth century. Dr George Shaw (Keeper of Natural History 1806–13) sold many specimens to the Royal College of Surgeons and had periodic "cremations" of material in the grounds of the museum.
Natural History Museum, London | Early history
The building had been erected from 1813 to the designs of David Laing. The building is 488 feet long, the central 200 feet being Smirke's work. He used large cast iron beams to support the floors of the upper galleries at the British Museum; these had to span 41 feet.
Robert Smirke (architect) | Constructional innovation
Today the museum no longer houses collections of natural history, and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of the independent British Library. The museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. The original 1753 collection has grown to over 13 million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library. The Round Reading Room, which was designed by the architect Sydney Smirke, opened in 1857. For almost 150 years researchers came here to consult the museum's vast library.
British Museum | The British Museum today
In 1874, the cornerstone was laid for the museum's first building, which is now hidden from view by the many buildings in the complex that today occupy most of Manhattan Square. The original Victorian Gothic building, which was opened in 1877, was designed by Calvert Vaux and J. Wrey Mould, both already closely identified with the architecture of Central Park.
American Museum of Natural History | Construction
The style lent itself particularly well to large industrial structures like Battersea Power Station (1934), the Hoover Building (1932-7), and the Carerras Cigarette Factory. Other outstanding examples of Art Deco can be seen in Ideal House in the City of London, and Senate House, the 19-story headquarters of the University of London in Bloomsbury and the tallest Art Deco building in London.
History of London (1900–1939) | Architecture and Building
With more space for displays and able to accommodate large numbers of visitors, the new British Museum proved a success with the public, and the natural history department proved particularly popular. Although the museum's management had traditionally been dominated by classicists and antiquarians, in 1856 the natural history department was split into separate departments of botany, zoology, mineralogy and geology, each with their own keeper and with botanist and palaeontologist Richard Owen as superintendent of the four departments. By this time the expansion of the British Empire had led to an increased appreciation of the importance of natural history on the part of the authorities, as territorial expansion had given British companies access to unfamiliar species, the commercial possibilities of which needed to be investigated.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
Throughout the years the popularity of the museum increased but in 1936 the fabric of the original building, Lark Hill Mansion, was found to be unsound and was demolished due to structural instability. The new wing, which was designed in the same style as the Langworthy Wing, took two years to be completed and opened in 1938. The decision to "echo the Langworthy Wing in the 1930s is remarkable in the architectural climate of the time and it is tempting to argue that Walker's addition is the first Victorian revival building in the country." The building development was a gradual evolution which was commenced by different architects evolving their ideas at different times.
Salford Museum and Art Gallery | Foundation
After the Cambridge University Act formalised the organisational structure of the university, the study of many new subjects was introduced, such as theology, history and modern languages. Resources necessary for new courses in the arts, architecture and archaeology were donated by Viscount Fitzwilliam, of Trinity College, who also founded the Fitzwilliam Museum. Between 1896 and 1902, Downing College sold part of its land to build the "Downing Site", with new scientific laboratories for anatomy, genetics and Earth sciences. During the same period, the "New Museums Site" was erected, including the Cavendish Laboratory, which has since moved to the West Cambridge Site, and other departments for chemistry and medicine.
University of Cambridge | Modern period
Several important scientific developments of the 19th and 20th centuries were made here, mainly at the Old Cavendish Laboratory, including the discoveries of the electron by J. J. Thomson (1897) and the neutron by Chadwick (1932), splitting the atom by Cockcroft and Walton (1932), mechanism of nervous conduction by Hodgkin and Huxley (1930s–40s), and DNA structure by Watson and Crick (1953).
New Museums Site | Introduction
In the early part of the 20th century further expansion took place in residential districts increasingly distant from the city centre. Bristol Hippodrome was designed by Frank Matcham, and opened on 16 December 1912. The Wills Memorial Building was commissioned in 1912 by George Alfred Wills and Henry Herbert Wills, the magnates of the Bristol tobacco company W. D. & H. O. Wills, in honour of their father, Henry Overton Wills III, benefactor and first Chancellor of the University of Bristol. Sir George Oatley was chosen as architect and told to "build to last". He produced a design in the Perpendicular Gothic style, to evoke the famous university buildings of Oxford and Cambridge.
Buildings and architecture of Bristol | 20th century
Victorian parts of the building have a complex history, with piecemeal additions by different architects. Founded in May 1852, it was not until 1857 that the museum moved to its present site. This area of London, previously known as Brompton, had been renamed 'South Kensington'. The land was occupied by Brompton Park House, which was extended, most notably by the "Brompton Boilers", which were starkly utilitarian iron galleries with a temporary look and were later dismantled and used to build the V&A Museum of Childhood. The first building to be erected that still forms part of the museum was the Sheepshanks Gallery in 1857 on the eastern side of the garden.
Victoria and Albert Museum | Architecture of the museum
The present building dates from the 15th century.
Cockpen | Introduction
The body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost and the unsuitability of its location. With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. At this time, the largest parts of collection were the library, which took up the majority of the rooms on the ground floor of Montagu House, and the natural history objects, which took up an entire wing on the second state storey of the building.
British Museum | Cabinet of curiosities (1753–1778)
On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his Royal Assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs. Together these four "foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving manuscript of "Beowulf".
British Museum | Foundation (1753)
In 1857, it moved to South Kensington (where it occupied the upper floor of one of the so-called 'Brompton Boilers' at the modern day V&A Museum); in 1869 it moved again, to new purpose-built premises (designed by Ewan Christian and Joseph Clarke) at 18-20, Bowling Street, Westminster; the street, located behind the Dean's Yard at Westminster Abbey, was renamed Tufton Street in 1870. Upon its reopening its royal patronage was renewed by Queen Victoria and it became the Royal Architectural Museum.
Royal Architectural Museum | History
New mezzanine floors were constructed and book stacks rebuilt in an attempt to cope with the flood of books. In 1931, the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen offered funds to build a gallery for the Parthenon sculptures. Designed by the American architect John Russell Pope, it was completed in 1938. The appearance of the exhibition galleries began to change as dark Victorian reds gave way to modern pastel shades. However, in August 1939, due to the imminence of war and the likelihood of air-raids, the Parthenon Sculptures, along with the museum's most valued collections, were dispersed to secure basements, country houses, Aldwych Underground station, the National Library of Wales and a quarry.
British Museum | Disruption and reconstruction (1925–1950)
By June 1853, both participating members and brokers were taking up so much space that the Exchange was now uncomfortably crowded, and continual expansion plans were taking place. Having already been extended west, east and northwards, it was then decided the Exchange needed an entire new establishment. Thomas Allason was appointed as the main architect, and in March 1854 the new brick building inspired from the Great Exhibition stood ready. This was a huge improvement in both surroundings and space, with twice the floor space available. By the late 1800s, the telephone, ticker tape and the telegraph had been invented.
London Stock Exchange | The Exchange before the World Wars
Pemberton Leach was appointed as architect. Work began on the new school building in May 1901 and the foundation stone was laid by Princess Helena on 13 November. King George V granted the school royal patronage in 1911, and it was renamed The Royal School for the Blind. It consisted of residential workshops and when the Second World War began it was requisitioned by King's College Hospital as a national emergency hospital.
SeeAbility | History
Here he was hemmed in entirely by the surviving building, but was entirely of the view that the new chamber should be congruent with the old as anything else would clash with the Gothic style of Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. This view found favour with Winston Churchill who observed "We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us". In a debate on 25 January 1945, the House of Commons approved his choice by 121 to 21.
Giles Gilbert Scott | 1940s
The present building dates from 1933 and was designed by Milburn Brothers with an art deco interior by T.P. Bennet and Sons. The colour scheme was originally in shades of deep brown with gilt friezes but in later years (circa 1980?) a multi-colour scheme was introduced, which did not reflect the original design.
New Theatre Oxford | Introduction
The opening ceremony for the Aston Webb building by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra took place on 26 June 1909. In 1914 the construction commenced of the Science Museum, signalling the final split of the science and art collections. In 1939, on the outbreak of the Second World War, most of the collection was sent to a quarry in Wiltshire, to Montacute House in Somerset, or to a tunnel near Aldwych tube station, with larger items remaining "in situ", sand-bagged and bricked in. Between 1941 and 1944 some galleries were used as a school for children evacuated from Gibraltar.
Victoria and Albert Museum | 1900–1950
The Art Collections were renamed the "Art Museum", which eventually became the Victoria and Albert Museum. When Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone for the new building for the Art Museum, she stipulated that the museum be renamed after herself and her late husband. This was initially applied to the whole museum, but when that new building finally opened ten years later, the title was confined to the Art Collections and the Science Collections had to be divorced from it. On 26 June 1909 the Science Museum, as an independent entity, came into existence.
Science Museum, London | Origin and history
The building is now a brasserie style restaurant, still retaining the hall and balcony. The new museum incorporated a hall with balconies, fitted with the original cabinets and lion case. Further expansion on the site, including an art gallery, new rooms for the schools, and extensive new galleries were completed between 1890 and 1900, and the Borough's floating debt on the project was extinguished by the generosity of Mrs Margaret Ogilvie of Sizewell Hall out of appreciation for Taylor's work.
Ipswich Museum | The New Museum, opened 1881
This building is of concrete and very functional, the only embellishment being the iron gates by Christopher Hay and Douglas Coyne of the Royal College of Art. These are set in the columned screen wall designed by Aston Webb that forms the façade.
Victoria and Albert Museum | Post-war period
With the growth of trade, the opening of the docks, and the increases in duties during the Napoleonic wars, larger premises became necessary in the early nineteenth century. To meet this need, a new building was begun to the designs of David Laing in October 1813, on a site immediately to the west of Ripleys's building, where Bear Quay, Crown Quay, Dice Quay, and Horner's Quay had once been. Laing had held the position of surveyor to HM Customs since 1810. On 12 February 1814, the old building was destroyed by fire, resulting in the explosion of gunpowder and spirits.
Custom House, City of London | Present building
On 7 June 1753 the British Museum Act 1753 was passed, authorising the unification of the three collections as the British Museum and establishing the national lottery to fund the purchase of the collections and to provide funds for their maintenance. The trustees settled on Montagu House in Bloomsbury as a home for the new British Museum, opening it to the public for the first time on 15 January 1759. With the British Museum now established numerous other collectors began to donate and bequeath items to the museum's collections, which were further swelled by large quantities of exhibits brought to England in 1771 by the first voyage of James Cook, by a large collection of Egyptian antiquities (including the Rosetta Stone) ceded by the French in the Capitulation of Alexandria, by the 1816 purchase of the Elgin Marbles by the British government who in turn passed them to the museum, and by the 1820 bequest of the vast botanical collections of Joseph Banks.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
1901 up to the end of the Second World War in 1945
List of British architects | Edwardian and inter-war period
The main façade, built from red brick and Portland stone, stretches along Cromwell Gardens and was designed by Aston Webb after winning a competition in 1891 to extend the museum. Construction took place between 1899 and 1909. Stylistically it is a strange hybrid: although much of the detail belongs to the Renaissance, there are medieval influences at work. The main entrance, consisting of a series of shallow arches supported by slender columns and niches with twin doors separated by pier, is Romanesque in form but Classical in detail. Likewise the tower above the main entrance has an open work crown surmounted by a statue of fame, a feature of late Gothic architecture and a feature common in Scotland, but the detail is Classical.
Victoria and Albert Museum | Edwardian period
The New Museums Site is a major site of the University of Cambridge, located on Pembroke Street and Free School Lane, sandwiched between Corpus Christi College, Pembroke College and Lion Yard. Its postcode is CB2 3QH. The smaller and older of two university city-centre science sites (the other is the Downing Site), the New Museums Site houses many of the university's science departments, lecture halls and examination rooms, as well as two museums. Formerly the site of the university Botanic Garden (which is now between Hills Road and Trumpington Road in the south of the city), the New Museums Site is an eclectic mixture of grand Victorian buildings erected between 1870 and 1909, such as the Old Cavendish Laboratory; yellow-brick buildings from the 1930–40s, largely utilitarian with the exception of the Mond Building; and modernist glass-and-concrete buildings dating from the 1970s, such as the Materials Science and Metallurgy tower.
New Museums Site | Introduction
The museum was founded in 1816 with the legacy of the library and art collection of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Viscount FitzWilliam. The bequest included £100,000 "to cause to be erected a good substantial museum repository". The Fitzwilliam now contains over 500,000 items and is one of the best museums in the United Kingdom. The collection was initially placed in the Perse School building in Free School Lane. It was moved in 1842 to the Old Schools in central Cambridge, which housed the Cambridge University Library. The "Founder's Building" was built during the period 1837–1843 to the designs of George Basevi, completed by C.
Fitzwilliam Museum | Foundation and buildings
In 1910, the natural history collections were moved to the new National Museum of Natural History, and the old National Museum Building was renamed the Arts and Sciences Building. In 1964 the remaining exhibitions were moved to the National Museum of History and Technology, now known as the National Museum of American History. In 1976, the rocket and aviation collections were moved to the National Air and Space Museum.
Arts and Industries Building | 1900s
This decade also saw the construction of an institutional building, the National Geographic Society's (NGS) Hubbard Memorial Hall at 1156 16th Street, built in 1902 and designed by Hornblower & Marshall. The NGS would later select Arthur B. Heaton to design Renaissance Revival additions completed in 1913 and 1932.
Sixteenth Street Historic District | 1900s-1910s
The facade, overlooking St James's Square, is constructed in Portland stone in a broadly Jacobethan style, described by the Survey of London as "curiously eclectic". The main reading room is on the first floor; and above this three tall windows light three floors of bookstack. Another four floors of bookstacks were built to the rear. In 1920–22, an additional seven-storey bookstack was built further back still, again designed by Osborne Smith. (This new stack was notable for its opaque glass floors: an unforeseen drawback of the combination of glass floors and structural metal shelving was that browsers in the stacks were liable to receive periodic jolts of static electricity, a problem which continues to catch new members unawares, and for which no solution has ever been found.) In 1932–34 another extension was carried out to the north, incorporating a committee room (named the Prevost Room, after a major benefactor; now converted to use as a reading room), an Art Room, and five more floors of bookstacks: the architects on this occasion were the firm of Mewès & Davis.
London Library | Buildings
During World War I (WWI) bombings, museums protected their collections by moving them to various locations. Many went into the damp London tunnels. After the war, the British Museum, lucky enough not to be bombed, reassembled the collection. After two years stored in high humidity, the objects were severely damaged with metal corrosion, mold and salt efflorescence. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (United Kingdom) (DSIR) hired Scottish Alexander Scott (chemist) (1853-1947), as director of scientific research in what became the British Research Laboratory in 1920. In 1922, conservator and archaeologist, Harold Plenderleith (1898-1997), became the first full time chemist affiliated with a museum laboratory.
Conservation and restoration of metals | Mid 1900s
Seen in its wider social context, Greek Revival architecture sounded a new note of sobriety and restraint in public buildings in Britain around 1800 as an assertion of nationalism attendant on the Act of Union, the Napoleonic Wars, and the clamour for political reform. It was to be William Wilkins's winning design for the public competition for Downing College, Cambridge that announced the Greek style was to be a dominant idiom in architecture, especially for public buildings of this sort. Wilkins and Robert Smirke went on to build some of the most important buildings of the era, including the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (1808–1809), the General Post Office (1824–1829) and the British Museum (1823–1848), the Wilkins Building of University College London (1826–1830) and the National Gallery (1832–1838).
Greek Revival architecture | Britain
The present building dates from 1841 to 1845. It was designed as the University Galleries by Charles Cockerell in a classical style and stands on Beaumont Street. One wing of the building is occupied by the Taylor Institution, the modern languages faculty of the university, standing on the corner of Beaumont Street and St Giles' Street. This wing of the building was also designed by Charles Cockerell, using the Ionic order of Greek architecture. Sir Arthur Evans (1851–1941), who was appointed keeper in 1884 and retired in 1908, is largely responsible for the current museum. Evans found that the Keeper and the Vice-Chancellor (Prof Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893)) had managed to lose half of the Ashmole collection and had converted the original building into the Examination Rooms.
Ashmolean Museum | Beaumont Street
The neo-Gothic building was designed by the Irish architects Thomas Newenham Deane and Benjamin Woodward, mostly Woodward. The museum's design was directly influenced by the writings of critic John Ruskin, who involved himself by making various suggestions to Woodward during construction. Construction began in 1855, and the building was ready for occupancy in 1860. The adjoining building that houses the Pitt Rivers Museum was the work of Thomas Manly Deane, son of Thomas Newenham Deane. It was built between 1885 and 1886. The museum consists of a large square court with a glass roof, supported by cast iron pillars, which divide the court into three aisles.
Oxford University Museum of Natural History | The building
The rest of the land belonging to 'Albertopolis', on the site currently occupied by the Natural History and Science Museums, was used to host the 1862 International Exhibition. A substantial portion was given over to the headquarters and gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, which was based on the site of the modern Science Museum between 1861 and 1888. The exhibition buildings were afterwards repurposed to hold the scientific objects from the South Kensington Museum, a collection which gradually expanded through acquisitions of scientific instruments in 1874, as well as acquisitions of patent models and machinery like the original cotton mills from Arkwright Mill.
19th-century London | Museums
The Victorian building, in the early Renaissance style, inspired by the work of T.G. Jackson, is Grade II listed by English Heritage. It was originally the "Price Memorial Hall" of the "Gloucester Science and Art Society", built for Margaret Price as a memorial to her husband William Edwin Price in 1893, and designed by F.S. Waller. The "Corporation of the City of Gloucester" took over the building as the "City Museum & Art Gallery" in 1902. Originally only on the ground floor, a first floor was added in 1958 which was opened by the archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler.
Museum of Gloucester | The building
This explicit separation was at the request of Owen, and has been seen as a statement of his contemporary rebuttal of Darwin's attempt to link present species with past through the theory of natural selection.
Natural History Museum, London | Planning and architecture of new building
The museum building was originally constructed in 1896 in British Malaya.
Figure Museum | History
The site for the museum was donated by Richard Sommers Gard, MP for Exeter from 1857 to 1864, and a competition for its design attracted twenty-four entries, including one from John Hayward, whose gothic design was the winner. His original plan called for a tall central tower like that at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, but that feature was rejected and was replaced by a gable and rose window. Initially proposed by Sir Stafford Northcote as a practical memorial to Prince Albert, an appeal fund was launched in 1861. John Gendall volunteered to curate an initial collection required to fill the planned building.
Royal Albert Memorial Museum | Establishment and early period
The new building was designed by John Dando Sedding, the architect of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street but, following Sedding’s death, it was built under the direction of his pupil and successor in practice, the noted designer and architect Henry Wilson. The foundation stone was laid in 1893 by Princess Helena, Queen Victoria's third daughter. The building was consecrated the same year by Frederick Temple, Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury.
St Peter's Church, Ealing | Heritage
The Reading Room closed in 1997 when the national library (the British Library) moved to a new building at St Pancras. Today it has been transformed into the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre. With the bookstacks in the central courtyard of the museum empty, the demolition for Lord Foster's glass-roofed Great Court could begin. The Great Court, opened in 2000, while undoubtedly improving circulation around the museum, was criticised for having a lack of exhibition space at a time when the museum was in serious financial difficulties and many galleries were closed to the public. At the same time the African collections that had been temporarily housed in 6 Burlington Gardens were given a new gallery in the North Wing funded by the Sainsbury family – with the donation valued at £25 million.
British Museum | The British Museum today
A new library building was constructed in the early 1990s and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1996. In 1967 with the new liturgical fashion, the magnificent Scott Rood Screen was removed in pieces and discarded. It has since been restored and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Hereford Cathedral | 20th-century extensions
However, by mid 1874, only a little over had been spent out of an estimated expenditure. By mid-1875 over had been spent on the new building. By this time tenders had been let for marble and timber floors. By mid 1876 the expenditure on the building had risen to and by mid-1877 to . By 1878 it was obvious that the building was going to considerably exceed the original estimates for its construction costs. By June of that year over had been spent, above the original estimate. This figure did not encompass the thirty-five thousand pounds it was estimated would be required for the finishing trades.
Chief Secretary's building | From 1860s to 1890s
Then the lower ground-floor galleries in the south-west part of the museum were redesigned, opening in 1978 to form the new galleries covering Continental art 1600–1800 (late Renaissance, Baroque through Rococo and neo-Classical). In 1974 the museum had acquired what is now the Henry Cole wing from the Royal College of Science. To adapt the building as galleries, all the Victorian interiors except for the staircase were recast during the remodelling. To link this to the rest of the museum, a new entrance building was constructed on the site of the former boiler house, the intended site of the Spiral, between 1978 and 1982.
Victoria and Albert Museum | Post-war period
As the suburbs expanded exponentially, in Central London much of the 1920s were spent completing major construction works begun before the First World War and delayed by labour and material shortages. A trend that emerged during the '20s and '30s was the sale and loss of many of London's grandest private homes in the exclusive areas of Mayfair and St. James's. The British aristocracy, unable to support the costs of maintaining large houses in London because of sharp rises in income and estate taxes, sold their homes to private developers, who built new commercial and residential premises. This was accelerated by the onset of the Great Depression in the '30s.
History of London (1900–1939) | Architecture and Building
The museum building was used as a store until well into the twentieth century. The block of land on which the Museum now stands was purchased at auction by Edward McRoberts on 14 February 1834 for 13 pounds 8 shillings, 8 pence. The titles were issued to him on 22 December 1834. The older western portion of this building was probably erected between 1835 and 1840. It was owned by Mr W. Stokes sometime after 1834 but little is known until 17 January 1853 when Samuel H. and Elizabeth Cohen, storekeepers, sold out to William Killion, another storekeeper, for 75 pounds.
Hastings Historical Society Museum | History
Finally in spring 1873 work began on the building, the contractors who worked on the building were for the general construction of the building G. Baker & G. Shaw and Mowlem, with the structural iron work being manufactured by J.S. Bergheim, all the terracotta used was manufactured by the firm of Gibbs & Cannings. The Museum opened to the public in April 1881, only two years before the director and driving force behind the museum Richard Owen retired. The design which marks an epoch in the modern use of architectural terracotta and which was to become his best-known work. The eventual cost of the building was £412,000 (roughly £47,000,000 in 2019).
Alfred Waterhouse | Natural History Museum