NOTES ON NEW BUILDINGS.
THE HOUSES ROUND HYDE PARK —BAY..WINDOWS.
IN the new neighbourhoods on each side of Hyde Park, adjoining the Bayswater and Kensington roads, streets and squares have sprung up so thickly as almost to obliterate every trace of the fields and gardens they have so lately supplanted. The houses are mostly adapted to the wealthy ; many of them are splendid mansions ; and nearly all are planned with a view to attract tenants who desire an aristocratic vicinage and affect a dashing style : for instance, the doors have porti- coes, with balconies, and are garnished with two bell-handles la- belled " visiters" and "servants"; garret-windows slink from observa- tion behind balustrades, or stealthily peep over high parapets; and chim- ney-pots ranged in a row endeavour to pass for a finish to the party- wall. The loftiness of the houses is imposing ; and their architectural pretensions challenge notice, occasionally exciting admiration even. The brick is mostly covered with compo'; but when it is shown, the windows and cornices are ornamented with stucco. On the whole, these new neighbourhoods exhibit a marked improvement on the dingy brick boxes full of square holes, such as Bath Blouse and other mansions in Piccadilly, and some villas on the Kensington road; which look as if their owners were too poor to cover their shabby bareness with archi- tectural dressings.
The Bayswater road, from Cumberland Gate to Victoria Gate, exhi- bits the progressive stages of improvement in street-architecture durins the present century : the whitewashed ugliness of Connaught Place is one step in advance of the dirty brown-brick boxes of Hyde Park Place in the article of cleanliness ; though the flat stuccoed fronts, with low wide windows, are as bald and tasteless as need be. Passing over the intervening row of brick-wall with glazed apertures which is dig- nified with the appellation of St. George's Terrace, on the strength of a raised causeway pleasingly diversified with steps up and down, we come to Hyde Park Terrace ; consisting of two respectable blocks of houses, showing a decided improvement of recent date, yet exhibiting the bar- barism of windows without mouldings between Corinthian pilasters, and mean windows in the roof crowning an architectural entablature. Let any one compare these houses with the contiguous mansions of Hyde Park Gardens, where the windows are becomingly ornamented with pediments and stone balconies, and the parapet screens no dormer win- dows: the contrast will show how far superior is the effect of a plain front with enriched windows to a decorated facade with holes cut in the wall. Hyde Park Gardens, however, are far from presenting so stately a frontage as the extent and magnitude of the houses would warrant: the division of the design into centre and wings is not so strongly marked as to tell effectively, while there is sufficient Irregularity to de- stroy that broad effect of simplicity and unity which would have re- sulted from an uniform facade. Dormer windows, that is windows projecting from the roof, are ob- jectionable features in an architectural facade of any pretensions ; but if necessary, they should be made as handsome as may be, and boldly brought out as part of the design—not half concealed behind parapets, as though the roof had been heightened as an afterthought, which is the case with the houses in Sussex Square and other squares and streets at the back of Hyde Park Gardens. The noblest palaces and the humblest cottages in France have alike dormer windows; but in every case they have a bold architectural character, that gives solidity and handsome- ness to the cottage, and detracts as little as such excrescences can do from the dignity of the palatial dwelling: those of the Hotel des Item- tides at Paris are ornamented with trophies, and have a magnificent ap- pearance. Nothing can be more ungainly than our slanting roofs with mean windows, looking like "foreheads villanous low," with protruding eyes destitute of brows. There is a row of small red-brick houses with stone dressings in Southwick Street, which have dormer windows ornamented with pediments, that really look handsome : they are with- out any other pretension than the good taste of their construction ; being snug and substantial dwellings, and form a marked contrast to the squalid poverty of the adjoining ones in the same street.
The handsomest range of houses in this quarter is Westbourne Ter- race, a wide street now in progress, leading from Sussex Gardens to the Great Western Railway Terminus : they are really elegant, well-pro- portioned, and not over-ornamented : the windows of the principal floor are decorated with Corinthian columns ; the cornice is rich, but
not so heavy as to require pilasters, the angles of each block of build- ings having quoins instead. There is a mansion on one side of the street remarkable for the novelty of its style ; the windows having four aper- tures divided by stone mullions, and the attics being lighted by circular apertures in the ornamented parapet : stone balconies to all the win- dows would be a great improvement, by taking off the flat square box- like look, and lessening the apparent length of the strips of glasit. Separate balconies of stone to each of the upper windows of a house have a very handsome effect : continuous balconies are admissible on
the principal floor, but if carried across the front above, they cut up the façade into horizontal strips ; whereas detached balconies have an opposite effect : they are better architectural ornaments than pilasters or columns, being not only useful, but giving an air of stateliness to the apartments opening into them.
The neighbourhood of Eaton and Be'grave Squares is too well known to require particular mention ; the architecture escapes censure if it
does not command admiration : but there is a block of houses forming the South side of Lowndes Square that is too remarkable to be passed unnoticed. The houses have chimnies enriched with pinnacles, which catch the eye of the passenger through Knightsbridge : their ap- pearance is bizarre; and as regards the chimnies, ornament is overdone ; the cornice too is heavy ; but as a whole, they are striking, if not in the purest taste. The windows seem smaller than they tire, the rooms being well-lighted ; and the French sashes, each glazed with a single sheet of plate-glass, opening into stone balconies, are very elegant ; though the
rusticated arches to the lower windows are not in good taste. The in- teriors are superbly finished, with richly-ornamented ceilings ; and the corner-house is decorated with stained glass and other enrichments. Any attempt to make chimnies ornamental is entitled to encourage- ment; and now that the propriety of making them an integral portion of an architectural design is admitted, and acted upon as a principle by such architects as Mr. BARRY, in the Reform Club, and Mr. COCKERILL, in the Sun Fire-office, it ought to be enforced universally. Had this been done a century ago, what a very different appearance the Metropolis would now have presented ! but until very lately, the architects found it convenient to regard chimnies as things invisible, or to be overlooked, though they form an essential feature of the sky outline of every dwel- ling-house. The number and variety of ridiculously clumsy and ugly contrivances to prevent chimnies from smoking, that want a draught to carry up the smoke, is quite curious : red chimney-pots, tall and short, straight and crooked, iron pipes bent in every possible way, and cowls of all shapes and sizes, are stuck up on chimney-stacks as if some chemon of deformity had amused himself with making the habitations of men ludicrous with hideous and unmeaning devices. The Italians have at last taught us how to make chimney-shafts sightly ; and Mr. PUGIN has shown, in some of his designs for monasteries, how to give them the character of pointed architecture.
A few words on windows. French sashes have become almost uni- versal in drawing-rooms opening upon balconies, and are also fre- quently introduced in chambers and parlours; they are not only more elegant than sliding sashes, but more wholesome ; admitting a freer current of air to ventilate the room, and keeping out the cold quite as well. Round-headed windows in the attics have a good effect ; giving a finish to the front of a house, and being much handsomer than the square apertures of the attic story. Windows with semicircular tops are also ornamental in the principal floor : where the angles of the wall are splayed or bevilled off both inside and out, the quantity of light ad- mitted is greater, and the windows have an appearance of amplitude that is extremely handsome. One of the very few good things for which we are indebted to Sir JOHN SOANE'S taste in architecture is this sort of window, as seen in the buildings he erected in Prince's Street, by the Bank. But there is one description of window, almost peculiar to this country, and particularly well adapted to towns where light, warmth, space, and a look-out are so much in request, which we are sur- prised to see so seldom used,—namely, the bay or bow window. No one who has lived in a bow-fronted house, or has even passed a few daylight hours in a room with a bay-window, but must have been sensible of the increased airiness and cheerfulness of the apartment : the sun comes in on three sides instead of one; you see up and down the street, instead of being limited to a few yards of brick wall over the way ; and several feet are added to the spaciousness of the room. Now, the mere gain of space in two or three front rooms, one might suppose would be a sufficient inducement in a city so closely packed as this metropolis, to throw out bays projecting over the area in front of almost every London dwelling : here is a positive loss of room, arising from flat fronts, equal to several feet of frontage. Where houses look out upon parks or gardens we occasionally see a bow- front: but, even if there be no other view than the perspective of a street, surely this is better than a prospect of a few yards in extent bounded by a house; the convenience of looking out without opening the window, in so variable and gloomy a climate as ours, is no small satisfaction : nor do the advantages of bay- windows stop here--having the sun shining into a room for a few hours longer, and gaining an increased amount of daylight, are con- siderations not to be undervalued in the thick atmosphere of London. In some of the old-fashioned streets, bays of a half hexagonal form may be seen ; but it is seldom the windows are large enough: old houses with square projections also may be met with, but rarely so well pro- vided with windows as those of two centuries ago, such as that formerly Sir PAUL PINDAR'S, in Bishopsgate Street. Our ancestors were fond of having plenty of light ; as their constant use of roomy bay-windows, and occasional specimens of fronts glazed throughout their whole extent, testify but the window-tax shut out from us the light of heaven, and the burden of the tax was increased far beyond its amount by the gloom it cast over our dwellings. Still, by means of bay-windows, more light could be had without an increase of tax, as well as more space and sunshine, and a look-out under cover. Some houses in the streets leading into the Bay swater road have bowed fronts, forming a segment of a circle this is hardly enough—a semicircular projection, or the half of an octagon, would be at once handsomer and more spacious. The win- dows should be placed so near together that the piers would be Covered by the curtains when looped up. A wide window, composed of a centre and wings separated by mullions, as in the Gothic bays, would be pre- ferable in the suburbs ; and a balcony with a verandah would be an agree- able and elegant addition. Two or three tiers of bay-windows perhaps are preferable to an entire bow-front: the bay s should be finished by a balustrade or railing at top, and slender pillars at the angles. to take off that edgy appearance which angular brick-work has. Li Park Lane, near Grosvenor Gate, are a few good examples of bow-fronted houses : Westhourne Terrace and Rutland Gate, also, have specimens of bow- shaped projections. But we have not met with any very becoming bay- windows either single or in tiers: we hope to see them sprouting out oftener both in the town and its suburbs.
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