William Adam (architect) - Legacy

Legacy

William Adam's dominant position in Scottish architecture is reinforced by his lack of contemporaries. Colin McWilliam, in The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian, wondered "whether Scottish architecture at this period... would have achieved very much without him."

Adam's death coincided with the final defeat of the Jacobite threat in 1746, and the advance of the Scottish Enlightenment, which resulted in new styles of building becoming popular. The development of Neoclassicism in the late 18th century was paralleled by a revival of the "castle" form of house, which would lead to the Scottish baronial style. Neither idiom however, owed much to the work of William Adam. As a practical man rather than a theorist, Adam never developed a strong enough style to exert a direct influence on the course of building design.

His main bequest to architectural history was his three architect sons, and in particular Robert Adam, whose success as developer of the "Adam Style" far outran that of his father. Although Robert formed his own style through lengthy study in Rome, John Fleming detects traces of his father's influence on all three of the brothers' work, and suggests that the Adam principle of "movement" in architecture was partly inspired by William's admiration for Vanbrugh. More concretely, Fleming notes that working with their father gave the brothers a solid grounding in the technical aspects of architecture, and introduced them to a set of clients which they might never otherwise have had access to.