Scotland's Robert Adam

Robert Adam (1728--1792),The second son of William Adam of Maryburgh, in Fife, and the most celebrated of four brothers, John, Robert, James and William Adam, was born at Kirkcaldy in 1728. For few famous men have we so little biographical material, and contemporary references to him are sparse. He certainly studied at the university of Edinburgh, and probably received his first instruction in architecture from his father, who gave proofs of his own skill and taste in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (now demolished). His mother was the aunt of Dr W. Robertson, the first English historian of Charles V., and in 1750 we find Robert Adam living with her in Edinburgh, and making one of the brilliant literary coterie which adorned it at that period. Somewhere between 1750 and 1754 he visited Italy, where he spent three years studying the remains of Roman architecture. There he was struck with the circumstance that practically nothing bad survived of the Greek and Roman masterpieces except public buildings, and; that the private palaces, which Vitruvius and Pliny esteemed so highly, had practically vanished. One example of such work. however, was extant in the ruins of Diocletian's palace at Spalato in Dalmatia, and this he visited in July 1757, taking with him the famous French architect and antiquary, C. L. Clerisseau, and two experienced draughtsmen, with whose assistance, after being arrested as a spy, he managed in five weeks to accumulate a sufficient number of measurements and careful plans and surveys to produce a restoration of the entire building in a fine work which he published in 1764, The Ruins of the Palace of Diocletian, &c. Considering the shortness of the time occupied and the obstacles placed in his way by the Venetian governor and the population of the place, the result was amazing. The influence of these studies was apparent directly and indirectly in much of his subsequent work, which, indeed, was in great measure founded upon them.

After his return to England he seems to have come rapidly to the front, and in 1762 he was appointed sole architect to the king and the Board of Works. Six years later he resigned this office, in which he was succeeded by his brother James,---who however, held the office jointly with another,---and entered parliament as member for the county of Kinross. In 1768 he and his three brothers leased the ground fronting the Thames, upon which the Adelphi now stands, for L. 1200 on a ninety-nine years' lease, and having obtained, with the assistance of Lord Bute, the needful act of parliament, proceeded, in the teeth of public opposition, to erect the ambitious block of buildings which is imperishably associated with their name, indicating its joint origin by the title Adelphi, from the Greek adelfoi, the Brothers. The site presented attractive possibilities. A steep hill led down Buckingham Street to the river-side, and the plan was to raise against it, upon a terrace formed of massive arches and vaults and facing the river, a dignified quarter of fine streets and stately buildings, suggestive of the Spalato ruins. In spite of many difficulties, pecuniary and otherwise (the undertaking was completed from the proceeds of a lottery), money was raised and the work pushed on; in five years the Adelphi terrace stood complete, and the fine houses were eagerly sought after by artists and men of letters. Splendid, however, as the terrace and its houses are, both in conception and execution, the underground work which upholds them is perhaps more remarkable still. The vast series of arched vaults has been described by a modern writer as a very town, which, during the years that they were open, formed subterranean streets leading to the river and its wharves. In many places the arches stand in double tiers. In time these ``streets'' obtained a bad name as the haunt of suspicious characters, and they have long been enclosed and let as cellars. Between 1773 and 1778 the brothers issued a fine series of folio engravings and descriptions of the designs for many of their most important works, which included several great public buildings and numberless large private houses; a fine volume was published in 1822. For the remaining years of Robert's life the practice of the firm was the most extensive in the country; his position was unquestioned, and when he died in 1792 he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey almost as a matter of course.