The new home of the Royal Society

Abstract

The adaptation of four terrace houses, 140 years old and of indifferent construction, as the headquarters of the Royal Society, could only be justified by unusual advantages of situation and environment. These advantages are, in fact, possessed to a marked degree by Carlton House Terrace and even more so by the houses which flank the Duke of York’s Steps. Their setting is superb. Not only do they face St. James’s Park and The Mall, which is London’s only formal processional way, but they are on the main pedestrian route between Parliament Square and the centre of the West End. On three sides their windows look out across trees to some of the most interesting urban prospects in Westminster. A little withdrawn from the noisier traffic streams, they are easily accessible from Waterloo Place at the upper level, where they share gardens and car-parking space with the clubs; and they are not far from buses and taxis and the Underground. As civic design the Terraces are also distinguished; not so much for their proportions and their architectural details, but for the order and assurance and contrast they bring to a landscape mainly picturesque. The Mall is a formal avenue between Admiralty Arch and Buckingham Palace and the Terraces line it—but only for part of its length. The arrangement of steps and balustrades and lateral facades on either side of the Duke of York’s Column is also formal, but faces a very informal section of the Park.