Philip HardwickRA (15 June 1792 in London – 28 December 1870) was an English architect, particularly associated with railway stations and warehouses in London and elsewhere. Hardwick is probably best known for London's demolished Euston Arch and its twin station, the original Birmingham Curzon Street, which stands today as the oldest railway terminus building in the world.
Career
Hardwick was born at 9 Rathbone Place (since demolished) in Westminster, London. He was educated at Dr Barrow's school in Soho Square and trained as an architect under his father, Thomas Hardwick Jr. (1752–1829), who was in turn the son of architect Thomas Hardwick Sr. (1725–1798). The Hardwick family name spans over 150 years in the history of British architecture.
Philip Hardwick entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1808 and then studied in France and Italy from 1815 to 1819. After travelling Europe, he took over from his father as Surveyor to St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. This post later passed on to Philip's son – Philip Charles Hardwick, meaning that three successive generations of the family held the post.
In 1825, he was appointed architect to the St Katherine's Dock Company, for whom he designed the dock buildings, Thomas Telford designing the docks themselves. In 1829 he became architect to the Goldsmiths' Company, designing a new hall for them which was opened in 1835.[1] In 1836, Hardwick became architect to the London and Birmingham Railway.[2] He built a great Doricpropylaeum, which became known as the "Euston Arch", as an entrance to the railway's Euston Station. In 1838 he built the Curzon Street Station as the railway's Birmingham terminus. It is an austere cubic three-story building in the Ionic style, with a portico of four giant Ionic columns.[3]
At Babraham Hall in 1822–1823, on the site of a long-demolished sixteenth-century house, Hardwick adopted a Jacobean style, using red brick with limestone dressings.[4] Brick was used again at Lincoln's Inn, when, in 1843–1845, Hardwick, in collaboration with his son, built a new hall and library. They used a Tudor style, the red brick varied with black brick decoration, and pale stone trim, foreshadowing the later fashion for polychrome brickwork.[5] For churches, Hardwick used both the classical style, as at Christ Church, Cosway Street, Marylebone (1824–1825),[6] and the Gothic, as at Holy Trinity, Bolton (1823–1825),[7] St John's, Catford (1854),[8] and the Royal Garrison Church, Aldershot (1863).[9]
Philip married Julia Shaw in 1819, at St James's Church, Piccadilly. Julia's father, John Shaw Sr. (1776–1832), and brother, John Shaw Jr. (1803–1870), were both architects. The two families lived close by within the boroughs of Westminster and Holborn. Philip Hardwick had two sons, the eldest died of smallpox whilst still at Eton,[10] the younger, Philip Charles Hardwick, was born in 1822 and trained as an architect under him. Philip Charles began working in the firm around 1843.
Hardwick was a close friend of the artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), who had been a pupil of his father. In 1851 Turner chose Hardwick as an executor to his will.
Despite the efforts of John Betjeman and other conservationists, the Euston Arch was demolished in the early 1960s. The gates of the arch are stored at the National Railway Museum in York. In 1994, the historian Dan Cruickshank discovered 4,000 tons, or about 60%, of the arch's stones buried in the bed of the River Lea in the East End of London, including the architrave stones with the gilded EUSTON lettering. This discovery has opened the possibility of a reconstruction of the arch.
The Great Hall at Lincoln's Inn and a new addition to the Stone Buildings, assisted by his son and John Loughborough Pearson at the cost of over £55,000, 1843–1845
King William Naval Asylum, now known as the Queen Adelaide Almshouses, St. John's Road, Penge (founded 1847), built 1848 to his designs at the request and expense of Queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the widow of King William IV, to provide shelter for twelve widows or orphan daughters of naval officers.[14] Now private residences.
The Royal Freemasons' School for Girls, Wandsworth, 1851[15]
^Richardson, Albert E.; H. Stafford Bryant, Jr (2001). Monumental Classic Architecture in Great Britain and Ireland. Courier Corporation. p. 93. ISBN978-0-486-41534-5.
^John Newman.
West Kent and the Weald. The "Buildings of England" Series, First Edition, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner and Judy Nairn, eds. (London: Penguin, 1969), p.433.
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