1722 Senate House

In 1713-14 Hawksmoor drew up designs to convert the centre of Cambridge into a grand Baroque composition, similar to Wren's plans for central London after the Great Fire.

Nothing came of these, but in 1722 James Gibbs submitted a plan for a more modest open court in the same area. A new Royal Library was to be positioned just East of the Old Schools, with the Senate House and a building housing the Registry, Consistory and Printing House forming identical North and South wings. The library was, like Wren's library at Trinity, to have had an open ground floor and large staircases at the North and South ends.

Gibbs' Senate House was built 1722-24. In elevation, it is a blend of the English Wren tradition and the Italian style of Fontana. With its alternating window pediment shapes, it also acknowledged the newly fashionable Palladianism. On the South side the centre three bays protrude slightly and giant attached columns support a pediment. To the sides of the central bay, the columns flatten to become pilasters. Internally there is one large unbroken room, with an anteroom to the East and galleries on the other three sides.

Stephen Wright was later to design a fine elevation for the court's West range building, albeit not the library envisaged by Gibbs. But a South wing was never built. There were a number of proposals for such a building, but they were all rejected as it would partially obscure the East front of King's College Chapel.

Storylines using this article

Classical Architecture [prev] [next]