(Richard) Norman Shaw - Reference

Architect, born in Edinburgh, EC Scotland, UK. He studied in London, where he practised. He was a leader of the trend away from Victorian style back to traditional Georgian design, as in New Scotland Yard (1888) and the Piccadilly Hotel (1905).

Richard Norman Shaw (Edinburgh May 7, 1831 – London November 17, 1912), was the most influential British architect from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings.

He trained in the London office of William Burn and with George Edmund Street and attended the Royal Academy classes, receiving a thorough grounding in classicism and met William Eden Nesfield, with whom he was briefly in partnership.

He worked, among others, for the artist, John Callcott Horsley, and the industrialist, Lord Armstrong.

Shaw was elected to the Royal Academy in 1877, and co-edited the 1892 collection of essays, Architecture, a profession or an Art? He firmly believed it was an art. Shaw died in London, where he had designed residential buildings in areas such as Pont Street, and public buildings such as Scotland Yard.

Besides the large country houses he is associated with, he also built and restored several churches, the best known of which are St. John's Church, Leeds;

His picturesque early country houses avoided the current Neo-Gothic and the academic styles, reviving vernacular materials like half timber and hanging tiles, with projecting gables and tall massive chimneys with "inglenooks" for warm seating.

His work is characterised by ingenious open planning, the Great Hall or "sitting hall," with a staircase running up the side that became familiar in mass-producing housing of the 1890s. New Zealand Chambers, Leadenhall Street, London, (c 1870 - 80); Lowther Lodge, Kensington, London 1873 - 1875; 6 Ellerdale Road, Hampstead, London, built for himself Old Swan House, 17 Chelsea Embankment, London, 1875 to 1877 Bedford Park, London, the first "garden city" suburban development: housing, including St Michael and All Angels Church, 1879 - 1882; Albert Hall Mansions, at Kensington Gore, London, England, 1879 to 1886. Savoy Theatre, London, 1881. small London houses at Kensington, Chelsea, and Hampstead; New Scotland Yard, on the Thames Embankment, London, 1887 - 1900 (now known as the Norman Shaw buildings and used as Parliamentary offices); Piccadilly Hotel, Piccadilly Circus, London, England, 1905 to 1908; House for Kate Greenaway, Frognal, London, 1885 Swanscombe Church in Kent

Reference

Andrew Saint, Richard Norman Shaw, 1976 ISBN 0-300-01955-6

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Richard Norman Shaw