Architecture
Survey of London: South East Marylebone: I and II (Yale Books, £150 for the pair)
The area covered by these volumes includes one of the most rewarding parts of London: the Portland howard de Walden estate, with its classically proportioned streets and complementary mix of Georgian houses and late-Victorian and edwardian buildings by good architects, notably Beresford Pite. This is an area of richness and visual coherence.
It is largely unmarred by overscaled Modernist intrusions, apart from the Luxborough Tower, although the editors are appreciative of the occasional ‘Brutalist’ interloper, such as the concrete lattice-framed Welbeck Street Car Park, ‘one of the most aesthetically accomplished buildings of its kind’.
Superbly researched, well written and comprehensively illustrated, the two volumes mark the longawaited return of the ‘Survey of London’ to the West end after excursions to Docklands, Woolwich and Battersea. Founded by C. r. ashbee and edited for nearly a century by London County Council before being taken over by english heritage with the GLC historic Buildings team in 1986, the survey has now reached a secure new berth at The Bartlett School of architecture.
The Bartlett must be praised for its support and commitment to this long-term work of architectural history; the planned successors to these two are volumes on West Marylebone and oxford Street.
The aesthete will be delighted by the detailed coverage of the superb early-georgian houses in the purlieus of Cavendish Square, the unique concentration of adam town houses in Portland Place and Mansfield Street and the manifestations of edwardian Baroque originality. however, the ‘Survey of London’ always combines art history with an understanding of social history and the architectural set-pieces are counterbalanced by excursions into half-forgotten slums, such as the delightfully named Grotto Passage and Paradise Place, scene of octavia hill’s first efforts at housing reform.
equally perceptive are the descriptions of the ups and downs of shopping in Wigmore Street and Marylebone high Street and the emergence of London’s prime medical quarter in and around harley Street. John Martin Robinson