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River Views: Transformations on the ThamesAuthor(s): Roger WoodleySource: Architectural History, Vol. 44, Essays in Architectural History Presented to JohnNewman (2001), pp. 115-122Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568740 .Accessed: 04/03/2011 09:54

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River Views: Transformations on

the Thames by ROGER WOODLEY

'The key to London is the Thames. Without the river, the city might not have existed and would certainly not have flourished.'" So runs the topographical argument for London's origin and successful growth. It stems from the Romans' choice of a crossing-point between a hill on the north bank opposite a rare spot of firm land - an island at high tide - among the marshes to the south. This was the first location up the tidal stream clear of marshland on both sides, and from it the Roman road network fanned out in all the necessary directions. There seems to have been no significant settlement in this place before.

But if the Thames is so important, why have architects and their patrons so consistently failed to appreciate it as London's raison d'etre? Although the city has exhibited, in most of its historical phases, the characteristics typical of a river town, attitudes to the river, architectural and other, have often been indifferent and occasionally even hostile.2 Compare it, for example, with Paris's long love affair with the Seine. Worse still, today the Thames seems to be seen as a public space along which, or in which, to locate facilities for entertainment: a noble stream metamorphos- ing into a playground.

In recent times few of London's important buildings have been successfully related to its river. Present waterside architecture, to take only that on the reaches between Blackwall and Nine Elms, mostly fails to capitalize on its spectacular location. It has not been for want of opportunity: regular transformations in such an important site are inevitable. The most obvious have stemmed from the successive downstream relocations of the port, but others have included the rise and fall of ecclesiastical

building, the Great Fire, the proliferation of bridges, increased canalization by embankments and the south bank's development out of marshland. But aesthetically the trend has been adverse. From around 1840 until quite recently the river has been perceived simply as a commercial street or a sinister purveyor of ill-health (until cleansed of its sewage), or in the Pool, perhaps less unsuitably, as a grand entryway (e.g. the signification of Tower Bridge). In none of these visions is there much of either aesthetic intent or celebration of origin: the few honourable exceptions are

largely survivals from an earlier age. These assertions are based on the precept of a significant relationship between a

river and the architecture on its banks, and the messages thus conveyed. The process is

dependent on the uses being made of the waterway and the priority accorded to waterborne viewers and visitors against those approaching by land. So, to begin with,

116 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 44: 2001

important questions arise on the siting and the orientation of the architecture. Does a building present its chief fagade and entrance to the river, or to its approach road? Are different meanings to be attached to both elevations, like the east and west ends of a church?

A further consideration is the existence or absence of a road alongside the stream. Such a road may be of natural or ancient origin (e.g. a levee or a strand, including Strand itself) or the consequence of deliberate embanking (e.g. most intrusively Sir Joseph Bazalgette's trio of highways - Victoria, Albert and Chelsea - built between 1868 and 1874). The construction of such a road, as opposed to a path for pedestrians or towing, tends to emasculate the architecture's relation to the water. River building is a distinct form only so long as it abuts the stream: otherwise it becomes merely the boundary of a one-sided street.

These are visual considerations, but in London's early development topography was probably the more important factor. The high ground of the City east of the Walbrook, not the marshy banks of the Thames, seemed to the Romans the more appropriate place for a town: here they adopted the conventional grid pattern, with important buildings such as the forum and basilica located as usual at the centre. But the so-called governor's palace appears to have overlooked the river at the point where the Walbrook entered it. Was this siting in order to enjoy a scenic location? Also, recent archaeology has shown that where the streets of the Roman city descended to the banks of the Thames and the Fleet and their wharves, they were carefully cut and terraced to give river views. Of course, this may have been merely functional, adapting to the gradient and without aesthetic intent.3

Roman London was a mainly north-bank location, a fact confirmed by the fourth- century extension of the wall along the river, cutting off the wharves. The bridge across to the settlement at Southwark thus became extra-mural, and the river excluded. No concern for appearances here. Again, the Saxon development at Lundenwic (Aldwych) seems to have been a matter of occupying the high ground further west along the strand, with an embankment at water level at Charing Cross. Next, the establishment in the tenth century or earlier of the West Minster was presumably, as so often with monasteries, not a question of scenery, let alone trade, but a suitable supply of water, in this case the point where the Tyburn entered the Thames. Even if scenic considerations had arisen, the south-north flow of the river at Westminster precluded a picturesque parallel with the stream like Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite.

The separation and dislocation of these various early initiatives suggest that the location of settlements in London was determined not by the river as such, even less by river views, but by the incidence of a crossing-point or a tributary. There was no island to form a centre for growth to both banks (as in Paris), nor bank sides of equal dimension and relative closeness (as in Dublin). Architecture spread along the north bank for reasons of pragmatism, not art.

But when we reach the later medieval and Tudor/Stuart periods, a greater sensibility towards the river's scenic qualities begins to be exhibited. The Tower is an early example: Henry III's and Edward I's thirteenth-century extensions along the riverside, centrally balancing the White Tower behind, combine access and defence with proportion and scenic order. Between Westminster and the City the ecclesiastical

RIVER VIEWS 117

houses arranged their palaces, not on the higher ground of the river terrace north of the strand, but at the waterside from Whitehall to the Fleet. Even the subsequent changes of ownership and additional building which occurred around their gardens after the dissolution did not mar the continuity of this rich panorama. Some, such as Durham House and the Savoy Palace, were placed at the river's edge, with doorways located Venetian-style, for entry directly from a landing-stage. Others, such as Suffolk House, old Somerset House and the later Northumberland House, were set higher up the bank so that those arriving by boat must traverse a formal garden. The romantic

setting of Essex House was celebrated in Spenser's Prothalamion as the point of disembarkation for the two swan-brides for their double wedding: 'Sweet Thames run

softly till I end my song.' Today, only the York Watergate (1626), ignominiously tucked away at the back of Embankment Gardens, survives as a reminder of these

grand moments of waterside arrival.

By the time we reach the period of Wren and his contemporaries, a grasp of the river's potential to display architectural grandeur becomes obvious. At Greenwich, John Webb's first new block for Charles II (1664-69) can be seen as part of a scheme

relating specifically to the river, from which downstream it could be viewed as a long palace-fronted facade. The pedimented side elevation overlooking the river can be read as a quasi-entrance. Wren's subsequent plans to rearrange the site to accommodate a naval hospital may have been less comprehensive than he originally wished. But the entire conception (complete by 1728) is Thames-related, matching Webb's block with the Queen Anne block to the east and creating the domed King William and Queen Mary blocks symmetrically in the intermediate space, so that the Queen's House becomes the (diminutive) centrepiece. The image is famous, rightly so, as a near-

perfect ensemble, the noblest river view in London. The precedent for Greenwich was Chelsea Hospital (1682-92). Here Wren's sense

of river-related perspective is illustrated in the odd angular siting. This was intended

presumably to extract the maximum effect from the triangular plot, a feature replicated either side in the Physic Garden and to a lesser extent in the later Ranelagh Garden. The portico and central courtyard of the hospital lie along one of the triangle's shorter sides, ignoring the hypotenuse along the bank. But as a result the vista, although at an

angle to the river, is longer, and was originally set off with small canals, grand iron

gates and steps. It must have been magnificent when approached upstream: as at Greenwich, and as at the great houses along Strand, much of the intended experience related to riverborne arrival. (This of course can no longer be experienced as the effect was obliterated by the Chelsea Embankment (1874).)

The Great Fire created a unique opportunity to integrate London with its river. Not since Boudicca had there been a moment when a truly fresh start was so necessary. As is well known, a number of proposals for a complete replan were submitted, with

surprising and ill-judged haste - Wren's the fastest of all, on io September 1666, only four days after the fire had officially been extinguished. It was too precipitate. Not

surprisingly, such instant brainstorms were rejected: nothing so rapidly conceived could possibly take account of the complexities of topography and ownership.

But, as visions of the riverside, these plans were inspired. If Wren's, or even more Evelyn's, had been adopted, they would have incomparably enriched the river. Wren's

118 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 44: 2001

proposals entailed canalizing the Fleet and creating Bridewell dock at its entrance, with the retention of other small docks only at Queenhithe, Dowgate and Billingsgate. Otherwise the river frontage was to be straightened to provide a 'Grand Terras with the Public Halls'. Perhaps the western frontage might have looked somewhat

regimented, but to the east a richer variety of facades was intended, with an open piazza on the north side of London Bridge, a formal garden incorporated into

Billingsgate and an equally formal Custom House (which Wren did rebuild, but more

modestly). Evelyn's first plan was even more river-oriented, with a larger piazza at the

bridgehead and a series of smaller piazzas overlooking the stream, including a riverside

Royal Exchange. There is no continuing quay, the piazzas being linked by roadways out of sight of the water. The aesthetic is thus entirely river-conceived, with the

piazzas and their buildings to be viewed from the water or from which to admire the river itself.

Even if these idealistic schemes could not materialize, concentration on the river was certainly established. By the early eighteenth century, perceptions of the central river came to embody a more powerful sense of the aesthetic than at any other time. There is at the same time a changed focus: the Thames as such, not just its surrounding architecture, now starts to be admired. In contemporary paintings river craft, rich in their variety, are given prominence. The advent of new bridges enrich the perspective. This was the era of royal water music and fireworks, anticipating (alas) the taste of the millennium. In 1749 the riverside gardens of the second Richmond House (architect: Lord Burlington) was the scene of a particularly spectacular firework display aimed at an audience on the river.4

Above all, the river was celebrated for its own sake. Canaletto's views are an

example of this new way of seeing, showing a fresh sensibility to the complexities of the scene, with harmonization of riverbank, distant steeples, boats and figures. The Thames's popularity with topographical artists like Samuel Scott and William Marlow must be read as an indication of its greater appreciation as a subject.

At a practical level, the opening of Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges reflected a similar concern to combine function and aesthetic. One result of these initiatives was the construction of a road network on the Surrey side, in contrast to the ribbon

development which had been the inevitable consequence of the single London Bridge. Consideration of the bridges' appearance was critical to the choice of designer, especially at Blackfriars, where many of the contestants in the 1759 competition submitted designs of a triumphal nature, although that chosen, by Robert Mylne, was

comparatively restrained. Even the varied and jumbled structures on London Bridge, until their removal in the 176os, could be perceived picturesquely.5

Two major architectural schemes of the period supremely succeeded in relating the

city to its river: the Adam Brothers' Adelphi (1772) and Chambers' Somerset House

(1776-I186). It is a commonplace to use these works as a means of opposing their architects - the Adelphi as an indicator of the Adams' predilection for personal gain, yet bringing to a relatively unfashionable part of town houses of nobility and grandeur, against Somerset House as a fine public space for important offices, celebrating the nation with suitable patriotic allusions. Yet it is not the contrasts but the similarities

RIVER VIEWS 119

that should be underlined. The recent bridges at Westminster and Blackfriars created, so to speak, a frame within which such riverside grandeur could be projected. Function was embodied too. Adam first, and Chambers not too proud to follow and extend, confidently grasped the need to combine the waterside requirement for wharfage and trade with polite and prestigious structures above. This spectacular adaptation of the boathouse principle was never successfully repeated, or even attempted.

Both structures refer consciously to the Thames. Chambers' indeed does so explicitly, in the bearded heads on the keystones of his Strand faCade symbolizing English rivers, and in Bacon's statue of George III in the courtyard, with Father Thames distributing imports from his cornucopia.6 Sadly such inspirations were to be superseded by a more utilitarian age. The river faCade of Somerset House has been defaced by Bazalgette's new road, and the Adelphi was swept away in the 1930S for money-grubbing ambitions even more blatant than those of its original designers.

In the next generation, with the extension of river crossings to include Vauxhall (1816), Waterloo (1817) and Southwark (1819), all by means of Rennie's inspirational bridges, the emphasis on the river's nobility continued.' When schemes for the replacement of London Bridge were invited in I799-I8OI, many reflected the exceptional architectural opportunities it offered, not only for the bridge but the banks and approach roads.8 In particular, Dance the Younger's suggestion of a double bridge with magnificent piazzas to north and south would have transformed this part of London into something like Paris. And although such a grandiose scheme may be dismissed as being unbuildable, it must be remembered that Dance was the City's own architect and would hardly have proposed a project which he could not subsequently implement.9 Of this period, Smirke's penitentiary at Millbank (1821) reflects with some success the same idiom as the Tower. And the entirely functional structures erected in the new docks by the Gwilts, Alexander and Telford perfectly fitted their purpose, at the same time achieving a particular dignity and solemnity in a river or dockside context - qualities appreciated, and at the same time trivialized, by current conversions into apartments and restaurants.

It was in such growing preoccupations with commerce and trade that the seeds of corruption were to germinate. Increases in commercial usage inevitably occurred at the expense of aesthetic considerations. It was not a new phenomenon. Until the eighteenth century, the central stream above the only bridge had frequently functioned as a ceremonial forum for royal occasions,"1 but thereafter the growth of wharves on both sides steadily and increasingly deterred royal or other residential occupation. The Thames came to be perceived as, above all, useful - a means for transport to and from elsewhere in England and a crucial trading link with Europe.

Downstream, the pragmatic approach had begun even earlier. Deptford was Henry VIII's chief shipbuilding resource. Billingsgate and the Custom House below the bridge and the Steelyard and Queenhithe above were primary destinations for commercial traffic.11 Deep-water docks were an inevitable solution to both the growth in size of ocean-going vessels and the congestion created by their number (just as container-based ocean transport led to their equally inevitable demise). It was taken for granted by the nineteenth century that the only role for the Thames east of the Tower was as a passage for trade.

120 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 44: 2001

Even upstream, by this period, commercial and practical considerations took priority. The linkage of cholera epidemics with the contamination of sewage left the Thames as the guilty party. This was a natural reaction perhaps, but the imposition in the 1870s of Bazalgette's monstrous embankments, to accommodate vehicles, railways, cables and sewers, brought about a comprehensive visual destruction. Despite the attractive watercolours presented by the engineer, there was no serious question, in these changes, of the aesthetic dominating: the provision of dolphin lampposts and Cleopatra's needle were gestures only. Perhaps consequent upon the problems with public health for which the river was blamed, the Victorians' attitude to the Thames was largely one of fear and disgust, and the embankments were seen as a welcome reform.12 Only by the end of the century did a few buildings, such as Whitehall Court (1884) and Mackmurdo's river facade to the Savoy Hotel (1889), achieve some kind of relationship with the stream across the intervening road and garden. But here and elsewhere even this effect has been undermined by the planting of trees.13

The nineteenth-century attitude to bridges is another indication of such visual insensitivity. Bridges became extensions of the street,14 no longer objects of beauty or magnificence. Old Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges, grandiloquent in conception, were briskly replaced by workaday structures, devoid of aesthetic appeal but admired, like the embankments, for their utility. The development of tunnelling technology enabled the river - thus by-passed underneath - to be ignored entirely. The crude commercialization implicit in the Alexandra, Hungerford and Grosvenor railway bridges of the i86os, extending their companies' penetration and profit to the rich north bank, further illustrates the same single-minded attitude.

However, we must not overlook the Houses of Parliament(1837-60). Here was an interesting compromise. No question of an embankment was considered at that stage, and clearly Barry sought a unified fagade for the Thames. For tourists today, the view of the Palace of Westminster from Lambeth Palace is still one of the most photographed and scenic of all. Yet it contains ambiguities. This is the facade most deplored by Pugin - symmetrical and tedious (to his mind), and indeed, despite our constant exposure to the image, a less interesting elevation than the west, or the Victoria and Clock Towers as individual entities. Its purpose - as a terrace - was no doubt justifiable, but it is curiously unremitting, with little variation of depth or decoration, especially with the continuing river wall obliterating the wings. The enchantment is the skyline. The Houses of Parliament relate to the river certainly, not as a means of entry, but by giving distance to the view.

Nor must we overlook the south bank, mostly riverside industry but with occasional scenically-conceived architecture interspersed. The fifteenth-century Lambeth Palace marks a unique and delightful survival, with towers and Archbishop Juxon's hall (1660-63) showing its best side to the river, enhanced by a rarity in London, a riverside church. Far to the east lies another, St Mary Overie (Southwark Cathedral), near the Bishop of Winchester's twelfth-century palace's long riverside facade, now in ruins and obliterated by riverside warehouses. Behind, once, the thatched roofs and flags of the theatres behind could be seen from the north bank. They were obliged to ignore the river, just as, oddly, does their twentieth-century replica, the new Globe, despite its bankside site. But in general the south bank - from marsh and tenter-ground to

RIVER VIEWS 121

wharf, boat-building and scrappy minor industry - had no established role before modernism.

And, in this idiom, the modern, it has been left to the Royal Festival Hall, sole survivor of the 1951 Festival of Britain,15 valiantly to carry the twentieth-century flag for riverside design. But this too is a confusing building. Where is its front? It relates itself to the river by means of its viewing balconies, but the recent removal of I960s walkways from its southern elevation has revealed a distinguished alternative view, almost more handsome than that from the river. Was this the original intention? The National Theatre and Queen Elizabeth Hall (now a candidate for demolition), also significant examples of modernism/brutalism - rare enough in London - are in fact similarly ambiguous: the front/back dilemma remains unresolved. Furthermore, each of these buildings appears as a one-offset-piece, unintegrated either with its immediate neighbours or the wider cross-river panorama.

County Hall was a much more successful riverside building, its raised platform presenting to the stream below an imposing neo-Renaissance crescent. The issue of front and back was here cleverly resolved (as it has been at the Tate Modern) by placing the main street entrance to one side, where its consciously gloomy Piranesian shadowed entrances perfectly balanced the lighter river facade: an underestimated building. But now, of course, the solemn classicism of County Hall has lost its original meaning: its own transformation has been from a headquarters of government to middle-grade hotels, an aquarium and Macdonalds. And the location of the London Eye has bullied it into final submission.

It is above all the Eye, along with the proposals for the South Bank Centre, County Hall's new populism and the plans for a lido in the river near Oxo Tower, which have carried the theme of entertainment to excess. This was not necessary. There is ample light entertainment elsewhere in London, and the river should have been the place for the purposeful architecture of a cultural capital.

There are recent precedents. Terry Farrell's Embankment Place and MI6 Building are increasingly admired. Norman Foster's bubble for the mayor near Tower Bridge will hardly emulate the lost grandeur of County Hall, but at least has a serious purpose and its design will connote a relevant watchfulness. And down at Canary Wharf, the shops and bars combine with American architecture to recreate the equally serious capitalist and business ethos of Manhattan.

But the Eye, engineering wonder though it is, and commercial success to boot, has become an inescapable presence, not only from the river, but as an interloper into many precious London views, such as that looking east from St James's Park. The frequently-adduced comparison of the Eiffel Tower is not apposite: that - also supposedly a temporary structure - lies well downstream from the centre of Paris, which keeps its greater ugliness invisible from the points de vue which matter. The Eye's all-seeing rim oversees us midgets in the streets below as from a giant, even if benevolent, mobile watchtower. It's enjoyable to go on, certainly, giving views of the capital and of Lambeth Reach that were unavailable before.16 But to the majority, forever obliged to view it from the ground as they go about their daily tasks, its intrusion into the centre of a great city confirms the inherent vulgarity of the age.

122 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 44: oo2001

And so the argument can be summarized. London's origin as a river-town, initiated by the Romans' riverside terracing (possibly scenic, even if their town centre was unrelated to the stream below), and confirmed by buildings of the Middle Ages, was well reflected in the architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But such ideals were superseded by cruder objectives. Despite Greenwich at the edge, and the Adelphi and Somerset House at the centre, each outstandingly exploiting its riverside potential, most later architecture by the Thames has failed to establish a

meaningful relationship with the river. The nineteenth century, with its excess of

railway bridges and preoccupations with trade and public health, is chiefly to blame. Even the best of that period, such as Tower Bridge, brilliantly though it enhances

every river view near it, today seems embarrassingly imperial. The twentieth century's Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre, fine as they are individually, as riverside buildings appear simply confused.

Depressing conclusion: the venerable and moody Thames, London's founding father and chief artery through history, gets shabby treatment from its architecture, and now appears at risk of becoming, in places, little more than a funfair.

NOTES

I The quotation is from Ann Saunders, The Art and Architecture of London (London, 1984), p. I I. 2 The characteristics of river towns are discussed in Spiro Kostof, The City Assembled (London, 1992), p. 40. 3 See Gustav Milne, The Port of Roman London (London, 1985). 4 Horace Walpole wrote: 'From boats on every side were discharged water-rockets and fires of all kinds; and then the wheels which were arranged along the rails of the terrace were played off; and the whole concluded with the illumination of a pavilion on the top of the slope, of two pyramids on either side and the whole

length of the balustrade to the water ... I never passed a more agreeable evening.' (Quoted in B. Weinreb and C. Hibbert, London Encyclopedia (London, 1983), p. 280.) 5 For example, the presentation of the bridge in Visscher's map (1616) and the paintings of Samuel Scott et al. 6 Another vivid example has now become more prominent with the advent of the Gilbert Collection: a giant keystone representing the Thames in the massive arch which was once the main river entrance.

7 Canova's comment on Waterloo was: 'the noblest bridge in the world, worth a visit from the remotest corners of the earth.' (Quoted in Weinreb and Hibbert, op. cit., p. 932.) 8 Not that one would wish to argue that Telford's proposed single iron span of 6oo ft would have enhanced the appearance of the area. 9 Although it has been argued that Dance's public silence when his plans were not pushed by the City, despite their approval by a parliamentary committee, suggests that he was not serious about them (F. Barker and R. Hyde, London as it mnigiht have been (London 1982), p. 45).

Io For example, the Lord Mayor's show took place on the river. Frost Fairs (this author is compelled to

admit) were another pleasant public celebration. 11 Even so, the river fagades of Billingsgate (I874-78) and the Custom House (I825-28) still relate most

successfully to the river. But see note 13 below. 12 In literature, the polluted Thames becomes of wider symbolic significance: e.g. Dickens' Our Mutual Friend (1865). 13 Particularly absurd are the trees in front of the Custom House.

14 Perceptions of a bridge as a continuation of a street go back as far as Palladio (Quattro Libri, IIi, Ch. iv). 15 A nice summary of the Festival: 'Cheerful, touching, funny, a little awkward, slightly self-conscious, and

wholly admirable' - Saunders, op. cit., p. 379.

I6 And quite unintended by the architects concerned. J. M. Brydon can never have imagined that we would be aerial voyeurs of the circular arcade hidden within his government offices in Whitehall.