NEW FOREIGN OFFICE.
Mr. Scott writes a manly letter on the subject of his New Foreign Office at Westminster. The notable failure of our public buildings—the introduction of a style almost vernacular and so admirably developed in our own and neighbouring countries, and his own earnest desire that both in arrangement and practical construction, as well as in architectural cha- racter his design should be thoroughly adapted to its purpose, nerved him to the public competition. As to the lighting of the rooms, the class of windows suggested by Mr. Scott exceeds in its area of glass those of the average of Grecian and Italian buildings by from 24 to 83 per cent. He disdains all idea of " Gothicizing" the buildings in the neighbourhood of his proposed edifice, and maintains whilst obviating the necessity of moving the State Paper Office, the superior cheerfulness of character of his design, which he asserts will not display the Italian -variety of pointed architecture. He seeks Parliamentary support as a reformer of our arts in a point on which the whole world has pronounced them to need reformation ; and his summary declares that his plan will contain one of the finest and openest quadrangles in this country. "Its details will be more than ordinarily lively, and cheerful ; its amount of window light will exceed that of, probably, any public building in this country ; its construction will embody every modern improvement, in- vention, and appliance ; its materials will be the most cheerful and the most durable ; its arrangement will be the most perfect which long and earnest study enable me to render them, while its cost will not in the least exceed what is customary with public buildings in the usual style."
Previous page
