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Design for The Great Victorian Way

Drawing
1855 (Made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This ideal scheme (never built) was an extension of the principles Paxton used in the design of the Crystal Palace. The intention was to form a covered way, circular in its route, which would keep out the dirt, rain, fog, smoke, damp and cold of the London climate. Paxton proposed using the recently invented smokeless pneumatic railway, in conjunction with covered streets, lined with high-class shops and superior dwellings, to make what was, from the point of view of transport facilities at least, a prophetic forerunner of the Circle Line, which now largely uses the route that Paxton put forward.

Object details

Category
Object type
TitleDesign for The Great Victorian Way (popular title)
Materials and techniques
Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour
Brief description
Design for The Great Victorian Way, a cast iron and glass vaulted structure, incorporating a roadway, shops, residences and pneumatic railway, 1855. Joseph Paxton
Physical description
Watercolour design drawing; a section showing perspective view and details of a vaulted cast iron and glass structure, shops, residences and a pneumatic railway. Scale approximately 1 inch to 6 feet. On wove paper remounted on modern paper.
Dimensions
  • Height: 70.6cm
  • Width: 104.7cm
  • Frame height: 104cm
  • Frame width: 138cm
  • Frame depth: 7.5cm
Style
Marks and inscriptions
Signed in brown ink on original mount Joseph Paxton Sydenham 1855
Object history
After Paxton's death, this design was inherited by G. H. Stokes (architect and son-in-law of Paxton) who died in 1874. It finally went to T. H. Thorpe, architect, of 23 St James Street, Derby, and was sold by this firm to the Museum.
Historical context
See the Report of the Select Committee on Metropolitan Communications, 1855
Subject depicted
Place depicted
Summary
This ideal scheme (never built) was an extension of the principles Paxton used in the design of the Crystal Palace. The intention was to form a covered way, circular in its route, which would keep out the dirt, rain, fog, smoke, damp and cold of the London climate. Paxton proposed using the recently invented smokeless pneumatic railway, in conjunction with covered streets, lined with high-class shops and superior dwellings, to make what was, from the point of view of transport facilities at least, a prophetic forerunner of the Circle Line, which now largely uses the route that Paxton put forward.
Bibliographic references
  • page 44 (with colour image) Jane Pavitt and Abraham Thomas (eds.), 'Superstructure: The Making of the Sainsbury Centre' (Norwich: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2018)
  • Sloan, Kim. Alexander and John Robert Cozens : the poetry of landscape, New Haven and London: Published in association with the Art Gallery of Ontario by Yale University Press, 1986
  • Sir Joseph Paxton, 1803-1865 : A Centenary Exhibition organized in association with the Victorian Society, London : Arts Council, 1965 114
Collection
Accession number
E.2425-1983

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Record createdJuly 1, 2009
Record URL
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