Architecture
The buildings are in banded red brick and white portland stone on a granite base in the Victorian Gothic style, and are located upon Victoria Embankment next-door to Portcullis House.
The North Building is Grade I listed. It was designed in 1887 as the replacement central offices of the Metropolitan Police, Shaw being the personal choice of the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews. It was built on land reclaimed from the River Thames by the building of the Victoria Embankment and which was previously allocated to a new opera house which was already partly built. The cost was around £120,000. In 1888, during the construction of New Scotland Yard, workers discovered the dismembered torso of a female; the case, known as the "Whitehall Mystery", has never been solved. Opened in 1890, the building was soon found inadequate for the growing police force and an extension was required.
The South Building, now Grade II* listed, built 1902-1906, was originally called Scotland House. Its elevations were designed by Shaw. It was linked to the original north building by a bridge over the then public road. Iron gates by Reginald Blomfield were erected. They are now Grade II* listed.
Read more about this topic: Norman Shaw Buildings
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“I don’t think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.”
—Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)
“Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one color or form or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)