Whitehall, SW1

Throughout the medieval period, the Palace of Whitehall grew as a complex of buildings housing the Royal Family. It was substantially extended by Henry VIII who also acquired St. James’s Park and other land for hunting, thus assuring the continuing close relationship of open space to Royal and government buildings. The eastern portion of the Palace was a rambling mixture of buildings and, as the first installment of a grandiose rebuilding scheme by Inigo Jones, the Banqueting House was begun in 1617.

In 1698 a fire destroyed almost the whole of the Palace; the plans to rebuild the area as Royal Residence and Courts were abandoned, and Jones’s scheme was never implemented. A few elements of the Palace of Whitehall remain, for example Henry VIII’s wine cellars in the basement of the Ministry of Defence Building, Cockpit Passage, and the gable wall of the tennis court at 70 Whitehall (now the Cabinet Office). Thereafter the area developed as a centre of government and many early important buildings survive, including the Admiralty (Ripley, 1722-6) with its screen by Robert Adam (1759-61), Horse Guards (1750-60 by Kent), Dover House (Paine, 1755-8) with its later domed forebuilding (Holland, 1787) and Kent’s Treasury Building (1733-6).

Together with the late 17th century and 18th century buildings of Downing Street they form a remarkable complex of official and domestic architecture around Horse Guards Parade. In the 19th century, building was undertaken on a much larger scale and with increasing grandeur; the south end of the west side of Whitehall shows this clearly; the Treasury Buildings to Whitehall were partly rebuilt by Soane (1810-20) and altered and refaced by Barry (1845) in a classical idiom.

The Foreign Office (now the Foreign & Commonwealth Office with Home Office) was built to the design of Scott (1860-73) and further blocks of government offices were built at the southern end of Whitehall to Great George Street (now the Treasury) by Brydon and Tanner (1898-1912).

William Whitfield’s Richmond House has been completed and the street block bounded by Parliament Street, Bridge Street and Canon Row refurbished as part of the Parliamentary Buildings (Phase I) project. There are current proposals to provide a new underground station to Bridge Street with parliamentary offices above, in a scheme designed by Michael Hopkins.


Streets of the City of Westminster

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