Well, back to London this last week. We were heading there to see a production of Stephen Sondheim's 'Pacific Overtures' at the Menier Chocolate Factory. However due to family illness that fell through and I sadly made a solitary visit to the capital.
The morning of that first full day in the capital, which was bright, crisp, and very cold, I had two objectives: The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, and (as it was roughly en route) the York Water-gate. The gate is perhaps a bit overlooked, is seen perhaps as a merely curiosity, rather like a folly on a country estate. And up to point it is a curiosity, an almost solitary architectural relic of Early Stuart London and relic of a different attitude to the Thames. A rare survival. It is indeed all these things and also, and more importantly, a rather beautiful piece of architecture. Quite extraordinary in its way, bulky and sculptural; rather like an vastly oversized casket. I find it fascinating.
Built in 1626 of Portland Stone using the masculine Tuscan Order, the gate was designed as a monumental entrance to York House from the river.* (There would have been some sort of pier or landing stage on the river side.) To the landward side the architecture is 'polite', or 'dilicate' as Serlio would have it, after all it faced the gardens and the house; to the river in contrast all is drama and bold rustication. And that is the side I prefer. It Time and the city have since wrought great changes: York House has replaced by the rather lovely, and axial, Buckingham St.; the Thames has been embanked and is now several hundred feet to the south and the left over space is now Embankment Gardens - a setting that, perhaps, doesn't do the gate many favours. You could argue, I think, that even in its changed environment that the gate continues to act as a liminal structure between nature and the city. It is said to be based on 'la Fontaine Medicis', prob by Tomaso Francini, in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, but quite frankly I don't see it.
Built in 1626 of Portland Stone using the masculine Tuscan Order, the gate was designed as a monumental entrance to York House from the river.* (There would have been some sort of pier or landing stage on the river side.) To the landward side the architecture is 'polite', or 'dilicate' as Serlio would have it, after all it faced the gardens and the house; to the river in contrast all is drama and bold rustication. And that is the side I prefer. It Time and the city have since wrought great changes: York House has replaced by the rather lovely, and axial, Buckingham St.; the Thames has been embanked and is now several hundred feet to the south and the left over space is now Embankment Gardens - a setting that, perhaps, doesn't do the gate many favours. You could argue, I think, that even in its changed environment that the gate continues to act as a liminal structure between nature and the city. It is said to be based on 'la Fontaine Medicis', prob by Tomaso Francini, in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, but quite frankly I don't see it.
And now for the question of attribution. In the 18th century the Neo-Palladians believed, erroneously, that it was a work of Inigo J0nes. A bit too lively I would have thought for that - Jones, after all could be a very dull architect. It is now thought to be the work of the mason and sculptor Nicholas Stone, though Sir John Summerson** suggested that was indeed built by Stone though to a design by Sir Balthazar Gerbier (crazy name, crazy guy!?!), but I haven't seen anything to confirm either suggestion.
*It is, in fact, all that is left of York House. Originally the Norwich House, the urban palace of the Bishop of Norwich, in the 16th century ownership swung between religious and secular. Later in the century it was the London home of the Archbishop of York - hence the name, but at the time of the construction of the gate it was back in secular hands and the Duke of Buckingham.
** 'Architecture in Britain 1530-1830' - The Pelican History of Art pp150-151
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