Image: Entrance to the King's Palace, Hyde Park Corner - Shepherd, Metropolitan Improvements (1828), p326

Description: The originally intended design for the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner by Decimus Burton, built from 1826–30 and so still under construction when the print was published. The engraving shows the full set of sculptures first intended to decorate the arch, including reliefs on the arch itself and statues of warriors above and between the columns. To save costs these were all ultimately omitted, to compensate for the overspending incurred in the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace being undertaken at the same time. A notable loss was the statue of the quadriga intended to top the monument, a Roman four-horse chariot similar to the statues on the top of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin (1793) or the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in Paris (1806-08). Instead the space was eventually taken by a three times lifesize bronze equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, which stood there from 1846 to 1882. The present bronze statue by Adrian Jones of the Angel of Peace descending onto a quadriga was added in 1912. The arch was originally placed facing north-north-east directly opposite Burton's Ionic Screen entrance to Hyde Park (1824–25), as the entrance to a grand processional route to Buckingham Palace along Constitution Hill (the end of which was re-aligned to run adjacent to Grosvenor Place to approach the arch squarely). A road-widening scheme at Hyde Park Corner in 1882–83 required the arch to be moved east, losing its relationship to the Hyde Park screen, although it still stood at the head of Constitution Hill, with which it was now placed on axis, facing westwards. The road junction was again remodelled in 1961–62 with the opening of the Park Lane dual carriageway, creating the present large roundabout and Hyde Park Corner underpass, so that the arch now sits in the middle of a large traffic island, although the route through it to Constitution Hill is still sometimes used for ceremonial purposes.
Title: Entrance to the King's Palace, Hyde Park Corner - Shepherd, Metropolitan Improvements (1828), p326
Credit: This file is from the Mechanical Curator collection, a set of over 1 million images scanned from out-of-copyright books and released to Flickr Commons by the British Library.  View image on Flickr   View all images from book   View catalogue entry for book. 
Author: Thomas Hosmer Shepherd
Permission: Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1926. This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/PDMCreative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0falsefalse
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
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