Burlington House
Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in Mayfair, London. It was originally a private Palladian mansion owned by the Earls of Burlington and was expanded in the mid-19th century after being purchased by the British government.
Burlington House is most familiar to the general public as the venue for art exhibitions from the Royal Academy. The academy is housed in the main building at the northern end of the courtyard. Five learned societies occupy the two wings on the east and west sides of the courtyard and the Piccadilly wing at the southern end. Collectively known as the Courtyard Societies, these societies are as listed below:
- - Geological Society of London (Piccadilly/east wing)
- - Linnean Society of London (Piccadilly/west wing)
- - Royal Astronomical Society (west wing)
- - Society of Antiquaries of London (west wing)
- - Royal Society of Chemistry (east wing)
History
The house was one of the earliest of a number of very large private residences built on the north side of Piccadilly, previously a country lane, from the 1660s onwards. The first version was begun by Sir John Denham in about 1664.[2] It was a red-brick double-pile hip-roofed mansion with a recessed center, typical of the style of the time, or perhaps even a little old fashioned. Denham may have acted as his own architect, or he may have employed Hugh May, who certainly became involved in the construction after the house was sold in an incomplete state in 1667 to Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Burlington, from whom it derives its name. Burlington had the house completed, which was the largest structure on his land, the Burlington Estate.
In 1704, the house was passed on to ten-year-old Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington, who was to become the principal patron of the Palladian movement in England, and an architect in his own right. Around 1709, during Burlington's minority, Lady Juliana Boyle, the second Countess, commissioned James Gibbs to reconfigure the staircase and make exterior alterations to the house, including a quadrant Doric colonnade which was later praised by Sir William Chambers as "one of the finest pieces of architecture". The colonnade separated the house from increasingly urbanized Piccadilly with a cour d'honneur. Inside, Baroque decorative paintings in the entrance hall and a staircase by Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini makes it one of the richest interiors in London.
In between his two Grand Tours of Italy (1714 and 1719), young Lord Burlington's taste (the third Earl) was transformed by the publication of Giacomo Leoni's Palladio which made him develop a passion for Palladian architecture. In 1717 or 1718, the third Earl began making major modifications to Burlington House and the supervision of the work was undertaken by Gibbs. Later, Colen Campbell was appointed to replace Gibbs, who was working in the Baroque style of Sir Christopher Wren, to recast the work in a new manner on the old foundation. This was a key moment in the history of English architecture, as Campbell's work was in a strict Palladian style, and the aesthetic preferences of Campbell and Burlington, soon joined by the aesthetic style of their close associate William Kent, who worked on interiors at Burlington House, were to provide the leading strain in English architecture and interior decoration for two generations. Campbell's work closely followed the form of the previous building and reused much of the structure, but the conventional front (south) facade was replaced with an austere two-story composition, taking Palladio's Palazzo Iseppo di Porti, Vicenza, for a model but omitting sculpture and substituting a balustrade for the attic story. The ground floor became a rusticated basement, which supported a monumental piano nubile of nine bays. This had no centerpiece but was highlighted by Venetian windows in the projecting end bays, the first to be seen in England. Other alterations included a monumental screening gateway to Piccadilly and the reconstruction of most of the principal interiors, with typical Palladian features such as rich coved ceilings. The Saloon, constructed immediately after William Kent's return from Rome in December 1719, has survived in the most intact condition; it was the first Kentian interior designed in England. Its plaster putty above the pedimented door cases were probably by Giovanni Battista Guelfi.
Lord Burlington transferred his architectural energies to Chiswick House after 1722. After Burlington's death in 1753, Burlington House was passed on to the Dukes of Devonshire, but they had no need of it as they already owned Devonshire House just along Piccadilly. The fourth Duke's younger son Lord George Cavendish and a Devonshire in-law, the third Duke of Portland, each used the house for at least two separate spells. Portland had some of the interiors altered by John Carr in the 1770s. Eventually Lord George, who was a rich man in his own right due to his having married an heiress, purchased the house from his nephew, the sixth Duke of Devonshire, for £70,000 in 1815. Lord George employed Samuel Ware to shift the staircase to the center and reshape the interiors to provide a suite of "Fine Rooms" en enfilade linking the new state dining room at the west end to the new ballroom at the east end. Like Carr's work, Ware's was sympathetic with the Palladian style of the house, providing an early example of the "Kent Revival", a particularly English prefiguration of Baroque Revival architecture. In 1819 the Burlington Arcade was built along the western part of the grounds.
In 1854, Burlington House was sold to the British government for £140,000, originally with the plan of demolishing the building and using the site to build the University of London. This plan, however, was abandoned in the face of strong opposition, and in 1857 Burlington House was occupied by the Royal Society, the Linnean Society and the Chemical Society (later the Royal Society of Chemistry).
The Royal Academy took over the main block in 1867 on a 999-year lease with rent of £1 per year; it was required to pay for its top-lit main galleries, designed by Sidney Smirke on a part of the gardens to the north of the main range and its art school premises; Smirke also raised the central block with a third story. The former east and west service wings on either side of the courtyard and the wall and gate to Piccadilly were replaced by much more voluminous wings by the partnership of Robert Richardson Banks and Charles Barry Jr., in an approximation of Campbell's style. These were completed in 1873, and the three societies moved into these. In 1874 they were joined by the Geological Society of London, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Society of Antiquaries.
