Sir Robert Smirke | British architect | Britannica (original) (raw)
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architecture
In Western architecture: Great Britain Following this were Sir Robert Smirke’s Covent Garden Theatre (1809), London’s first Greek Doric building; Wilkins’s Grange Park, Hampshire (1809), a monumental attempt to cram an English country house into the form of a Greek temple; Smirke’s vast Ionic British Museum (1824–47); and St. Pancras Church (1819–22) by… Read More
In Western architecture: From the 19th to the early 20th century The first successes of Smirke—Lowther Castle (1806–11), Westmorland, and Eastnor Castle (c. 1810–15), Herefordshire—were in this style. The most spectacular was Windsor Castle, by James Wyatt’s nephew, Sir Jeffry Wyatville, who began the remodeling in 1824. Gothic was also employed in collegiate work. William Wilkins built the screen and… Read More
British Museum
In British Museum …the Greek Revival style by Sir Robert Smirke, was built on the site of Montagu House in the period 1823–52 and has been the subject of several subsequent additions and alterations. Its famous round Reading Room was built in the 1850s; beneath its copper dome laboured such scholars as Karl… Read More
In London: Museums of London …rebuilt to the design of Robert Smirke, who graced the south front of the museum with a massive Ionic portico. The heart of Smirke’s design, a large internal quadrangle, was roofed over in the 1850s with an immense copper dome to create the famous Reading Room, in which Karl Marx… Read More
