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Design for The Great Victorian Way
Paxton, Joseph - Enlarge image
Design for The Great Victorian Way
- Object:
Drawing
- Place of origin:
Great Britain, UK (Made)
- Date:
1855 (Made)
- Artist/Maker:
Paxton, Joseph (Sir), born 1803 - died 1865 (Designed)
- Materials and Techniques:
Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour
- Museum number:
E.2425-1983
- Gallery location:
Prints & Drawings Study Room, room WS, case R, shelf 97, box R
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.
